Follow-Up
by GratefulInsomniac
Summary: House and Cuddy meet to care for Wilson in his final days.
1. Part I: The Untranscended

_A/N: I thought I was done writing House fic, but this story popped into my head and I feel like I need to get it out. I've been too recently reminded of how cruel cancer can be, and maybe this is just my way of processing that. This story is angsty. It has elements from other stories I've written, spun a bit differently, so I apologize if parts of it feel rehashed. This will only be a few chapters long._

* * *

**Part I: The Untranscended**

As Cuddy stood in the foyer of her hospital, she was unaware of the weakened man whose eyes had been following her for the last few minutes. The man waited nearby while she carried out an impromptu meeting with one of her physicians. She didn't notice that the stranger followed her down the hall to the elevator. She entered the elevator and hit the button, politely asking what floor her co-rider was going to. "Four," the man answered in a soft, strained voice. Then he added, "You look great."

Cuddy stifled a chuckle at the forwardness of this old man, nodding and replying, "Thank you. This is my floor. Have a nice day."

"No hug for an old friend?" the voice asked a little more forcefully, sounding familiar enough to make her turn around.

She held the elevator door open before it could shut. As the realization hit her, she felt a tightness at the back of her throat as she asked, "Wilson?"

"I've lost a few pounds," he confessed.

Shaking her head, she got back on the elevator and delicately wrapped her arms around his shoulders, "I just didn't expect to see you."

"That's probably true. But I'm guessing you didn't recognize me because I look like shit," he chuckled.

"I can't believe you're here!"

The elevator doors shut as he said, "Wasn't that your floor?"

"I'll take you to my office," she answered, pressing the button for the top floor. "Unless you're here to see someone else?"

"Just you," Wilson replied.

"Where have you been?" she asked as they entered her office.

His eyes grew wide as he looked around. The office at this hospital was nearly twice the size of her old office, opulently decorated, equipped with the finest furniture and technology and a view that was surely to be envied. "This…is your office now?" he asked.

"This isn't a teaching hospital…it's a whole different world here."

Even after the short walk, Wilson seemed exhausted. He sat down, leaning his palm on his knee as he tried to find his breath. She sat on the chair next to his as she was finally able to really look at him. It was easy to see why she hadn't recognized him. It seemed almost unfathomable that his perennially boyish face was so gaunt and hollow that he actually looked so old. Dark circles surrounded his eyes and his skin seemed stiff and pale. The thing that was most shocking was his weary voice. He was so quiet and frail that it didn't even seem possible that he could have changed so much. Logically she understood the havoc cancer could wreak on a body. She'd seen it hundreds of times. She knew the physical changes that could happen, but seeing such changes in Wilson, a man she'd worked with almost every day of her life for years, defied logic.

"So…tell me everything," she insisted, trying her best not to seem shocked by his appearance.

"Everything is…complicated. And I'm a little short on time."

"When's the last time you've seen a doctor?"

"Let me think…this morning when I looked in the mirror."

She smiled disappointedly, "So you aren't receiving any care?"

"I have a huge favor to ask. I wouldn't ask except—"

"Anything!" she answered, reaching out and covering his hand with hers. "Tell me what you need."

"I'd like a scan. I don't want to deal with a new oncologist. I don't want to fill out forms and discuss my history, and go through all of that just to see a scan that I can read myself. I know what I'm looking for."

Cuddy nodded, "Sure."

"I don't have insurance—"

"God, no, Wilson," she said, somewhat offended. "I'll take care of it."

"Thank you."

"So, is treatment out of the question?" she tried.

"I just want to see the scan…I _need_ to see the scan."

"I'll get you in today. Let me check the schedule."

* * *

After the scan, Cuddy took Wilson back to her office to view the results. As he stared at the scan he shook his head. He _knew_ what the results would be, but seeing the truth brightly lit up on a computer screen made everything painfully clear. "If you want to try treatment, I'll make it happen," Cuddy offered.

Wilson continued to stare at the screen, and he finally said, "I just wanted to see it."

"Untreated, how much time do you have?"

"I'm already on borrowed time," he admitted.

Cuddy stepped in front of him, leaning back against her desk, and she said, "Why are you really here? I don't think this scan is telling you anything you didn't already know. I'm flattered you thought of me, but I don't think catching up with me was your motivation."

"I thought I'd made my peace with this. I'm just…I'm not ready to give up. And I feel like I owe…," he shook his head. "I don't know."

"It's worth a try," Cuddy stated. "I don't want to pressure you. But if you want it, treatment is yours. I can talk to our lead oncologist, transfer your records, you can review all of the options and choose what's best for you."

"I can't afford to—"

"We can work all of that out. Maybe I could bring you on as a consultant. Take tonight to think about it. If you want treatment, meet me here tomorrow."

Wilson stared out the window. He looked back at her and said, "I'm not unrealistic about this. I just don't want to go out without knowing I tried."

She nodded. "Then I'll see you tomorrow."

* * *

Given Wilson's compromised state, he was admitted to the hospital while he was being treated. The chemo made him quite ill, but oddly enough, after some care at the hospital, he started to look a _little_ better. The transformation wasn't amazing, but he looked a little less gaunt, and his voice seemed a little stronger. It was enough to give them a spark of hope, even against the odds.

Cuddy went to Wilson's room a few weeks after he'd begun treatments. She sat on the edge of his bed, draping her fingers over his bony wrist. "Wilson, I know these treatments have been difficult."

"I knew what I was signing up for. I think I can be released between rounds of chemo."

"Stay," Cuddy said, knowing they could make him more comfortable at her hospital.

"I should go. I know it's not cheap to keep me here."

"Stay," she insisted. "We need to keep your strength up. You have a decent view. The food is pretty good. Your nurses love you. If you want anything like books or movies or whatever, I'll bring them here. And…he doesn't have to wait until after midnight to come in. Evenings are fine. Tell him any time after six."

"Who?" Wilson asked, turning toward her with a manufactured look of confusion.

"You're still a terrible liar."

"I don't…I just…I don't know what you're talking about."

"Wilson, I'm not that clueless. There's only one person you'd go through all of this for."

"Who?"

"You know who. Don't do that to me, Wilson. He _died _and you suddenly disappeared without a word. Am I supposed to think that's a coincidence? Plus, like I said, he's the only person you'd go through all of this for. I know he's here."

"That's pretty wild speculation. House was a genius but I don't think even he could cheat death."

"And he's on my security cameras," Cuddy said as she took a few printouts from her clipboard and placed them on Wilson's bed. "I know that's him sneaking through the door between midnight and two am every morning, using the employee ID badge I gave to you. It was a decent disguise…the crutches instead of a cane, the bulky sweatshirt, the hat. But I knew what I was looking for."

"How did you even know to look?"

"The two of you are like…soul mates or something…inseparable." She shrugged and smiled and confessed, "And, after the second or third night you were here, your nightshift nurse mentioned the 'rude asshole' who sat here with you all night. I thought there was no way it could be true, but it seemed like too much of a coincidence. So I checked the cameras."

Wilson winced, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I wish you would have told me…but I guess I don't blame you for keeping it to yourself. I'm not even sure how I would have reacted. But, he's stayed out of my way, and I will continue to stay out of his. I don't think he wants to see me any more than I want to see him. He's here for _you_. I'm here for _you_. That's the extent of it."

"You're remarkably calm about this."

"I wasn't when I first figured it out. I had a minor breakdown," she said as she smiled.

"Why didn't you say anything to me?"

"I thought you had enough to deal with at the time. You still do. Your focus should be on resting, getting better."

"And now it's fine?" he skeptically asked.

"The thing is…it doesn't matter. This isn't about me, or House, or House-and-me. This is about you. I don't want you to leave, because I think we can make you more comfortable here. At the same time, I think you should have access to your support system."

"I don't know."

"I don't want you to be alone. I'll have someone bring in a more comfortable chair for him. I can take days, he can take nights. He can come in, use the side entrance he's been using. House and I never even need to see each other."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely," she answered with a smile. "It's in the best interest of my patient."

* * *

Cuddy didn't see or hear from House while Wilson was treated over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, the cancer was ultimately undeterred even though the chemo was quite aggressive. The momentary improvement that had given them hope slipped away as the benefits of good rest, fluids and proper nutrition couldn't combat the cancer and chemicals that coursed through his veins, and his body began to surrender even though he wasn't prepared to give up.

After a follow-up scan, it was clear the chemo wasn't slowing Wilson's cancer. Even the spark of hope had been snuffed out. It simply wasn't worth subjecting Wilson to chemo any longer. Cuddy went to Wilson's room to talk to him about his latest results. The moment he saw the look on her face, he said, "It's time to stop."

She nodded, "Wilson, I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. I appreciate all of your help. I'd like to leave tomorrow."

"Would you like me to call Hospice?"

"No. I don't want another stranger offering me their sympathies, no matter how good their intentions."

"Then I'll do it. I can prescribe something to keep you comfortable and monitor you. Let me do this. I'll be as unsympathetic as possible," she said with a gentle smile.

He laughed softly, "Okay."

Cuddy talked to him until exhaustion took over and she could tell he just wanted to sleep. "I'll be back later. If there's anything you need, just—"

"Just rest. I'm tired," he answered.

She left the room, maintaining her poise as she tried to get to a secluded place. Her office was too far away, and she didn't want to break down in the hallway, so she slipped into the chapel. Quickly sweeping her eyes over the space, she was relieved that no one was there. Hurriedly entering the chapel, Cuddy pushed the door shut with both hands and began to step backwards. Her control was slipping away. It had been nice seeing Wilson again, feeling a connection to the past and holding on to some hope that maybe she could help him. She so desperately wanted to give him the second chance that he'd given so many people over the years. The momentary hope had been a cruel trick, and now all that was left was suffering and death.

Her hand went to her forehead as she could no longer hold back the tears. The sight of her friend in his current condition continued to appear in her mind. He was only a shell of his former self, and in spite of his efforts, it was becoming difficult for him to hide his pain. Taking a few shaky steps without looking, Cuddy bumped a table, and a vase full of flowers tumbled to the ground, shattering. Flowers and leaves scattered across the floor. She grabbed the nearby trashcan that was filled with tissues from someone else who'd probably received devastating news. Shoving the flowers as deeply into the can as possible and picking up the larger pieces of glass, she felt a few tears continue to slip over her cheeks in spite of the distraction. She winced as she felt a stab in one finger. A small shard of glass was sticking out of her fingertip. Carefully removing it, she mumbled a string of curses befitting the day. Taking out her cell phone, she said to the answerer, "This is Dr. Cuddy. I need someone from Environmental Services to vacuum up some glass in the chapel," and abruptly hung up.

Cuddy sighed, taking a few cleansing breaths to steady her emotions until she could seek refuge in her office. As she began to walk down the aisle to the door, a figure sat up in the second to last bench from the back. "You didn't call the cops. Why?" he asked.

"Were you _sleeping_ in my chapel?" she asked, ignoring the dizziness she felt as shock hit her.

She'd seen the camera footage, she'd known he was around, but being in the same room with him made it all very undeniable. "_Your_ chapel?" House asked. "I always knew it would come to this. Do you require human sacrifices or are monetary offerings from your subjects enough?"

She clenched her jaw as she asked, "How did you know I'd be here? I never come here."

"I didn't. Which is why I was here. Waiting for my turn to visit Wilson."

"The scans came back."

"I know."

"It's not good."

"I know. He texted me. I'll get him out of here. You didn't really think that would work, did you?"

"I hoped."

"Apparently, hope was a waste of time."

She countered, "Having hope is not a flaw."

"But it is naïve. And in cases like this, it's just pointless."

Cuddy was ready to argue but she shook her head mumbling, "Speaking of pointless..."

"You mean this particular discussion or our entire history."

"Where are the two of you staying?"

"Why do you care?"

"I'm not calling the cops, if you're worried about that. As far as I'm concerned, we never even saw each other. I don't feel like filing another police report, enduring another barrage of questions from some uniform who looks at me with pity or disgust or…whatever. This is about Wilson."

They'd avoided looking directly at each other through the entire discussion. Perhaps some part of each of them clung to the last piece of denial, like they could partially ignore their proximity by refusing to fully acknowledge it. Wilson, the last tenuous thread that connected them, was barely holding on.

House finally answered, "I've been hanging out here the last few days. The hospital-wide free Wi-Fi is a nice touch. Your security guards suck. They don't seem to mind a chronic loiterer. And that chair in Wilson's room was like a welcome mat."

Her eyes were still cast away as she spoke, "I've offered to provide palliative care for Wilson after he leaves. I want him to be comfortable."

"I can do that without you."

"With what? Heroin? Stolen morphine? Whatever you can find on the street that's been cut with god knows what?"

"You're right, how foolish of me! He could die," House sarcastically jabbed.

"I'm offering to administer the medication he needs to stay comfortable in a safe, controlled way. It won't cost you a thing. You can save your money for whatever pills you're popping these days. I'll coordinate my visits with Wilson so that you and I don't even have to see each other. He shouldn't suffer because of how you feel about me. "

"This has nothing to do with you."

"I agree. It doesn't," she curtly answered. "Do you have a place or not?"

"Not yet."

Cuddy grabbed a pamphlet from a rack nearby and wrote an address on it. "This is an apartment we keep for visiting guests…surgeons, specialists, donors. He can stay there. I'll give Wilson the key."

"Do I have to pretend I'm not staying with him?"

"No. I've dealt with the past, with my feelings about you and our…_relationship._ I've transcended all of it."

House scoffed loudly and countered, "You've _transcended_ it? How is the weather up there, in your lofty perch above the rest of the untranscended? You're so fucked up that you actually think you're all better."

"I know you're hurting right now—"

"Don't give me that crap."

"You are. You're upset about Wilson and—"

"I barely remember not hurting. This is nothing new."

"—And so instead of arguing, I'll focus on what's best for Wilson. He needs you. You should stay with him," Cuddy continued emotionlessly, holding the pamphlet out to the side toward House.

He slid along the bench until he was just close enough to reach and took it, flipping the pamphlet over and reading it, "'_Coping with Loss. Part Two: Anger.' _Is this a hint?"

She shook her head, "It was a coincidence. I grabbed the first one in that row. Do him a favor. Take him to the apartment. I'll be by tomorrow at noon and I'll stay for about an hour. With a little coordination, we won't even have to see each other."

"Avoidance. Yes, clearly you've _transcended_ the past." House stood, the two still avoiding direct eye contact. He limped slowly past her and reached for another pamphlet. "My cell, for the time being," he explained as he scrawled with one of the half-sized pencils that lined the rack. "Text me whenever you need to see Wilson so you can avoid future sightings." He handed her the paper he'd written on. When she took it, he tapped the pamphlet with his finger and, finally catching her eye, said, "This pamphlet…not a coincidence."

The door opened and a man with a vacuum looked at Cuddy, "I've come to clean up the glass."

She pointed her employee toward the remnants of the broken vase, and when she was done, House was already gone. Cuddy looked down at the pamphlet he'd given her and the phone number he'd written on the back without any sort of label. She flipped the pamphlet over and read the title: _'Coping with Loss. Part One: Denial.'_


	2. Part II: Stepping Out

_A/N:Thanks to all of you who've welcomed me back!_

* * *

**Part II: Stepping Out **

The first day Cuddy went to the apartment where House and Wilson were staying, she spent several minutes debating whether or not to text House using her personal cell phone. She wasn't sure if she wanted to give him the number. She wondered if she was opening up a line of communication that would be difficult to close. She could already imagine him calling and texting at all hours. Ultimately, she decided it would be best if he had her number in case something happened to Wilson. She could always change the number later if necessary.

She took out the pamphlet he'd written his number on and programmed the number into her phone. Then she typed '_On my way' _and sent the message.

Cuddy gathered her keys and prepared to leave, checking her phone several times as she went to her car. House didn't respond. She pulled up to the apartment, studying the windows as she wondered if he'd received the message. Finally, she got out of the car and decided she was going into the apartment. Cuddy wanted to make it clear that House couldn't rattle her. She was going to prove that she was there for Wilson. Using her key, she went inside. Wilson was resting on a recliner in the living room. The lights were dim and the TV was on. He had a drink next to his chair and some of the things he might need within arm's reach. Cuddy approached quietly in case Wilson was sleeping. He turned his head and said, sitting up, "Hey. This place is great. Thanks for letting us use it."

"Oh, you're welcome," she answered as she stood next to him. "I guess House didn't get my text?"

"He got it."

"He did?"

"Yea. He said you were - -he said you were on your way."

She raised one eyebrow and nodded slowly, "He said I was 'on my way'?"

"Not exactly in those words, but that was the gist of it."

Cuddy actually smiled as she shook her head, "I'm sure whatever he said was interesting. Anyway, how are you feeling?"

Wilson looked at her, blinking a few times, "I'm doing alright. How are you? Are you okay with all of this?"

"I wish we were doing something to actually make you better," she answered. "I keep waiting for someone to rush in with some last minute brilliant idea that saves the day."

"I meant are you okay with House. With that."

"Why are we even talking about that? I'm fine. Now, you know the drill, so I'm not going to waste your time. How much pain are you in and how out of it do you want to be? We'll try to strike the right balance."

"I feel okay today. I'm not ready to sleep my days away just yet," Wilson said, although it was easy to see his pain on his face.

"Okay," Cuddy replied, readying his medications and administering them as the two talked.

* * *

They had a few more visits like that one. Cuddy always texted, House never responded, and he didn't appear at the apartment while she was there. Cuddy had been so ready for these possibilities that she actually felt oddly off-balance when he was nowhere to be found. But Cuddy and Wilson didn't talk about House. In fact, they seemed to talk about everything _except_ House.

She'd been visiting for nearly a week, usually twice a day. And then, one day, House was at the apartment when she came. She knew he was there because she heard his voice as soon as she opened the door. She was a little earlier than normal, but she'd texted him to warn him of the earlier time and had given him plenty of notice.

As she stepped into the foyer, she could see House and Wilson in the living room, and a mess all across the floor. House was on the ground, sopping up spilled soup and a drink that must have been their lunch. It looked like the table had been toppled. Wilson seemed inordinately disappointed about the mess as he leaned down and tried to help clean up from his spot on the chair. House struggled to stand as he got up from the floor, his leg causing a whole additional set of problems. He tossed the wet towels into the sink in the kitchen. Limping back into the room, he impatiently gestured for Wilson to give him something. Wilson labored just to pull off his soaked tee and give it to House. Cuddy stood, glued to her spot, as Wilson's scrawny figure waited, half-slumped in his chair.

House returned a moment later with a clean shirt that he unceremonious threw at Wilson. "Sorry I knocked that over," Wilson said.

"This is all part of your plan, isn't it?" House roughly teased.

"Which plan is that?" Wilson asked as he pulled on his clean shirt and rested in the chair, already exhausted.

"Getting cancer so I'd have to wait on you hand and foot."

Cuddy was shocked by something that had sounded so cruel, but Wilson smiled, contentedly jabbing back, "Now that I'm actually dying, I'll admit my plan does have a few flaws."

"Hindsight is always twenty-twenty."

"You know what this means though? It means that I will ultimately win the friendship. I will go out as the alpha friend."

"And all along I thought I was the master of all plans brilliant and self-destructive," House retorted.

"It's all worth it then," Wilson chuckled. "I would have done this long ago, had I known about all the perks."

She found herself smiling at the scene, at the way House made Wilson more comfortable by treating him exactly as he always did, and then House seemed to catch the glint of Cuddy's smile and he turned in her direction. His mood shifted as he frowned and grumbled, "You're early."

She shook her head and took a few steps into the room, "I texted."

"I didn't get it," House replied, digging in his jeans' pocket for his phone. As he looked at the display and saw the missed text, he added, "Oh. I'll get out of here."

Cuddy looked at his soup stained shirt and damp jeans and shook her head, "If you want to clean up, it's fine. We can handle being under the same roof for a few minutes, right? I'm fine with it if you are."

"Of course you are. After all, you're beyond your whole House-phase. It's as if I never existed," he commented as he left the room.

After Wilson heard the shower turn on, he said to Cuddy with an intentionally hushed tone, "I need you to do something for me…"

"If this is about House—"

"It is," Wilson interrupted, "but it's not what you think."

She sighed, and asked with reservation, "What is it you want me to do?"

"After I die—"

"Wilson," she cautioned.

"Just…hear me out. You aren't planning on reporting him, are you? When he left, there were a number of charges against him _before_ he faked his death. But after—"

"If he gets caught, it won't be because of me," she answered.

"Thanks. And don't worry, I highly doubt he'll bother you."

"He won't. We're not really on each other's radars anymore."

"Is that so?" Wilson countered.

"Okay, smart guy. Why do _you_ think he'll stay away?" Cuddy asked as she measured out Wilson's medicine.

"Because it hurts you both too much. You both have plenty of reasons to be angry, but deep down…if you peel away the anger and frustration and annoyance, you're both just heartbroken. Hurt. It's not really all that complicated. At least that part of it."

Cuddy stared for a few seconds while she thought about what Wilson had said, and then she cleared her throat and answered, "An interesting theory."

"Not that it matters much anyway. He won't be around for more than a few months."

"Oh? You think he'll skip the country?" she casually asked.

"I don't know. That's not what I meant. I meant…I don't think he'll survive that long."

Cuddy stepped back until the backs of her legs hit a chair and she slowly lowered herself into it. Disconnectedly, she asked, "House only has a few months to live?"

"A year at best," Wilson answered.

Cuddy was white as a sheet and her eyes seemed sort of glazed as she questioned, "He's sick?"

"Only in the ways you already know about."

"I don't understand."

"He doesn't deal well with loss. This has been pretty well documented. He's been great through all of this. At first he was so busy trying to make sure we had a great time. He wanted my last few months to be memorable. And they were, believe me. Then, when I started getting sicker, he started doing whatever I needed, taking care of me, and complaining about it the whole time. At least he never treated me any differently. He never lets me thank him without snapping at me. But this whole time, he was focused. He had a purpose, a tether. When he's done taking care of me…he'll have no tether. There won't be anything to hold back for. No dependent or mission or purpose. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what will happen at that point."

"What exactly do you think will happen?"

"You know as well as I do…House will have himself one _serious_ numbing session."

"You think he'll kill himself?"

"Not intentionally. There just won't be anything to hold him back on his binges. He won't kill himself, but he won't _not_ kill himself either. Anyway, that's all beside the point. I'm not asking you to be responsible for him. All that I'm asking is that you don't turn him in. After I die, let him go on his way. Let him go out on his terms instead of in some prison. I know I've already asked a lot from you…but, I promise, that's the last thing." Wilson smiled at her.

She stood, returning her attention to the administration of the painkillers he needed to be comfortable. She continued talking with Wilson, but she was obviously distracted. When she heard the shower turn off in the other room, she quickly gathered her things, promising she'd be back again later to check on him, and she was out the door.

Once the door shut, Wilson folded his hands over his stomach, leaned back and began to smile. House entered the room, glancing at Wilson before he went to the window. House observed, "Cuddy looks upset. Is that because I was here or did you show her your hideously disfigured penis?"

"You know," Wilson hypothesized, "I think she really expected you to be more present."

"In what way?"

"Just here. You know where she works, but you don't go there. You have her phone number but you don't bother her. She shows up here and you're almost always gone."

"That _was_ the agreement."

"I think she was more prepared to…fend you off. When have you ever stayed away because you've been told to?"

"When what I've been told to do is also what I want to do."

"Alright," Wilson said as he rested his head and mumbled, "I'm going to take a nap."

"Are you _smiling_?"

"Must be the drugs," Wilson muttered as he went to sleep.

* * *

A few more days passed with regular visits by Cuddy without any interference from House. As she was preparing to leave one night, she asked Wilson, "Does House carry any identification?"

"Why?" Wilson wondered.

"You said the other day that if you're gone—"

"_When_ I'm gone," Wilson corrected.

"Right_, when_ you're gone. You said he'd probably end up overdosing."

"Well…"

"Essentially that's what you meant," she emphasized.

"Yea," Wilson admitted.

"If that happens. If they find him in some bathroom in a bar or an abandoned building or a cheap motel…would they be able to figure out who he is?"

"He carries a fake ID."

"So since most people think House is already dead, no one would be looking for him, so he'd either be identified by whatever alias he's using or he'd be labeled a John Doe. I mean, no one would compare House's medical and dental records to that body because they think House is already dead."

"I guess not," Wilson answered. "Does it really matter?"

"I just…I wouldn't know. No one would know. No one would come to collect his body or give him a decent goodbye."

"Are you—"

"You know what," she interrupted, "never mind. That thought just occurred to me. It doesn't matter. I'll be back tomorrow to check on you."

"Okay," Wilson hesitantly replied as Cuddy left.

* * *

When Cuddy arrived the next day, Wilson wasn't in the living room where he usually waited for her. She started to worry because on Wilson's best days, he felt so-so, and the bad days were sheer hell, and at some point, she knew he wouldn't be able to hold on anymore. She went back the hall toward the bedroom and saw his door was ajar. As she peered in, she saw Wilson on the bed, and House sitting on a chair next to the bed. House pulled Wilson's covers up around his shoulders and then tried to find a pulse in Wilson's wrist where his hand stuck out from the blankets.

As soon as House's shoulders slumped, Cuddy gasped, "Oh, god. Is he—"

House stood, shaking his head and gesturing for her to be quiet. He stepped out into the hallway, closing Wilson's door. He stood next to her in the narrow hall, and they were suddenly very close, "It's kinda creepy the way you keep sneaking in here and spying on me."

"I told you yesterday what time I'd be here," she argued.

"I didn't know it was that late," he grumbled, closing his obviously bloodshot eyes.

"What happened? Is he okay?"

House leaned against the hallway wall and replied, "He had a bad night. He was in a lot of pain. He just got to sleep a couple of minutes ago."

"Why didn't you call me?"

"I'm a little fuzzy on the whole contact-no-contact thing since you've made it perfectly clear that we're not to cross paths."

"You could have texted. Or called. If Wilson needed me—"

"He didn't," House said, trying to push past her to his own room. "Give me a couple of minutes and I'll get out of here."

"Have you slept?" she asked, following him into his room.

"Let me get this straight. Every time you text, I have to obediently be exiled until you're done here, but you can come in whenever you feel like it and barge into my room?"

She took a step back until she was in the hall instead of in his room and said, "I'm trying to keep a reasonable amount of separation, for both of our sakes. Nothing that happened between us can be undone."

"I agree, which is why I didn't text you last night. It's also why I don't hang out and chat while you're here or stop by your work or follow you home. It's why I never made any attempt to contact you before," he answered as he walked over to the door and tried to swing it shut.

Her hand blocked the door before it could close and she asked, "Did you sleep?"

He sat on the edge of the bed and shoved his feet into his sneakers, "If you quit bothering me, I can get out of here."

"I don't think you should go right now."

"And I don't care what you think."

"You don't have to leave. Why don't you lie down. Sleep. I'll stay with Wilson so you can rest. You need a break."

"You're here to take care of _Wilson_. Last time I checked, I'm not Wilson. The agenda was made clear."

"But it's in Wilson's best interest for you to sleep. I think we should communicate a little more often. Just for a few minutes and only about Wilson."

"Seriously?"

"You and I are both here for the same thing. You've been very respectful of my requests, and I really appreciate it."

"It's not _for_ you."

"I know. But I still appreciate it. In a way, this is a professional arrangement. We're both here for a common goal. Why can't we just handle this professionally? We should be able to talk about our patient. And there's no need for you to leave, unless you want to, as long we keep our focus on him. I think we might be able to help him more if we work together. I can do that for him. You?"

"I didn't behave professionally when I worked for you, why would I now?"

"I'm not talking about requisitions and regulations. I'm talking about the fact that I can set my personal feelings aside. You don't have to leave when I come in. In fact, you and I _should_ talk, exchange information about him. If he's in pain, you should call me. I'll come."

House seemed to consider it and asked, "You're willing to set your personal feelings aside?"

"If you are."

"Why would you have to set your personal feelings aside if you've moved past all that…doesn't moving past it imply that there are no feelings to set aside?"

"You're still fixated on one statement I made."

"I'm simply making an observation. _Professionally_."

Cuddy deflected, "Can we agree on today's course of treatment? You stay here and rest. I'll keep an eye on him. I can work here until you wake up."

House flopped down, only kicking his shoes off after he was stretched out in the bed. "Can you close the door then?"

* * *

When House woke, he walked past Wilson's room. Cuddy was sitting on the floor in the glow cast by her laptop. From the look on her face, it had been a stressful day.

"Did he wake up at all?" House whispered.

She closed her laptop and walked out to the hall to join him. "He was awake on and off. He ate very little. We talked, then he went back to sleep. He'll probably sleep a while with all that I have him on."

"Okay."

"He seems to be declining fast. I don't think he has much more time."

"Probably for the best," House mumbled.

"So I have an idea, but I need your help."

"For what?"

"I want to take him out, but I can't do it alone."

"Take him _out_?"

"Not - -not kill him. I meant take him out for an afternoon. A couple of hours. One last hurrah."

"I don't think he has much more 'hurrah' in him."

"I agree, which is why I'd need your help."

"He doesn't like it when people gawk."

"I thought about that, too. He's been talking about some of his memories with me. Going to the movies, drinking a decent beer, simple things. There's a place in town, a refurbished theater. They play old movies, the kind of stuff Wilson loves. They rent out the place in the afternoon for private parties. I can drive him right up to the door. I can get a wheelchair from the hospital if he needs it. And I know a great place to get a beer. They have a private back room with its own bar. No one would stare. I mean, I know it's not as exciting as—"

"He couldn't handle exciting anyway," House interrupted.

"My thoughts exactly. It will take both of us though. I can't do it on my own. I just want him to have one more nice afternoon that isn't in here or in the hospital. One more chance to just be a normal person instead of a cancer patient for a couple of hours."

"He was in really bad shape last night. It might already be too late for that."

"If he has a good day, we'll do it. In fact, if he seems good some morning, call me. I'll set it all up. Unless you think it's too dangerous."

House thought for a moment and answered, "There's not a lot of point in stretching out his time now."

* * *

A couple of days later, Cuddy was answering emails at her desk when her phone lit and chimed that she'd received a message. When she saw House's name on the screen, her heart clenched for a moment as she hoped that Wilson hadn't died during the night. Of course she'd been having that feeling a lot lately, as every late call or text carried with it the possibility of news she didn't want to hear. Without picking up her phone from the desk she poked in her security code and waited for the message to appear. '_Have time for a ritual sacrifice?'_

Cuddy smiled at the display for a second before she reminded herself of the specific nature of their collaboration. She responded: '_Be down in five.'_

As soon as she walked into the chapel, she saw House sitting on the table at the front of the room, his feet swinging. She sighed, but, as she'd learned too many times in the past, sometimes it was best to pick her battles. She sat in one of the benches and asked, "Is he okay?"

"Okay meaning…?"

"Meaning not dead."

"Then yes. He's okay. Actually, that's why I'm here," he said as he hopped down and took a seat in front of her, sitting sideways and stretching his legs out along the bench. "He's having a good day, or at least as good as he's going to get. He's actually a little hungry this morning, so I went for breakfast and stopped here. I know you're not fond of all things impromptu, but—"

"Let me call the theater."

"You think you can get out of here?"

"Yea. He might not get another good day. I'll need an hour or two to clear my schedule and set things up."

House reached under the bench and took out a brown paper bag. From it, he pulled out a coffee and held it out for her.

"Do I need to run a tox screen on this before I drink it?" she asked as she took the cup from his hand.

He shook his head. He didn't make any comments about the coffee being a peace offering or a sign of appreciation, in fact, he didn't say anything. He watched while she took a sip. The coffee was perfect. The perfect temperature. The perfect roast. Prepared just as she preferred it. She hadn't had time for a cup since arriving at work, and she wondered if, somehow, he'd known that as well. She nodded her thanks and she saw the momentary look of satisfaction that crossed his face, like in some small way he wanted her to know that he still knew her completely.

"I better get going," she said as she put her hand on the back of his bench and stood.

"I need to know. Has he asked you for a little nudge?" House questioned, his voice drenched in solemnity.

"A nudge?"

"A miscalculation in his morphine dose? Maybe he asked you to 'accidentally' forget your pharmaceuticals on his table when you leave?"

"Assisted suicide?"

"Precisely."

"Oh, god, no. He hasn't even hinted about that. Why? Did he ask you?"

"No. And I don't think he will ask _me_."

"Because he doesn't want to put you in that position. I don't think he wants to leave you. He's worried about you and how you're going to handle it when he dies."

"I just wanted to know if he asked you, I didn't want to discuss anyone's feelings about it," House said, the weight of his friend's suffering resting heavily on him. "If he asks you…are you planning on telling me?"

Her finger tapped the coffee cup that she held between her hands, and she carefully responded, "Would you really want to know?"

He pondered the question, but didn't seem to find an immediate answer. Cuddy waited, telling herself several times not to ask the question that was on her mind, but the words emerged, "Are you okay?"

"Am I _okay_?" he asked, the uncertainty in his eyes suddenly replaced by something more fiery.

"Just because I'm trying to be sane and cautious around you, doesn't mean I don't still care about how you feel. I hate seeing you in pain, but we can't just act like nothing happened and slip into old behaviors. At the same time, taking care of someone you care about who's terminal can be very hard on a person."

"Ya think?"

"It's killing me to see him struggling like this. And I know what he means to you. You must feel—"

"We have a very specific agreement. We talk about Wilson. His treatment. What's best for him. How I _feel_ isn't on the list of approved topics."

"In a way, it is," she tried. "How you feel about what's happening with Wilson is directly related to his condition."

"For once, I'm doing exactly what you want. I'm staying away. I'm leaving you alone. And you're _still_ not satisfied. You don't get to neatly define the parameters of our interactions, and then try to get a peek inside my head while you're safely tucked away in an observation room wearing the emotional equivalent of a hazmat suit."

"You're bottling up all of these feelings and no one can do that forever. I just…in spite of what you think, I hate to see you going through all of this on your own. If you want someone to talk to about _this_, I can listen. I'm here. I can see that you're hurting."

"And what if I don't want to talk to you about _this_. What if I want to talk about something else?"

"I'm not trying to punish you, House. I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do in this situation. I'm doing the best I can to protect myself, to protect both of us. Damn right I want to keep a safe distance. You want to talk about being broken? You should have seen how I was when I left Princeton."

"How did you get past it?" he asked. "If you were so _broken_? Apparently none of it matters now. Maybe I want whatever magic pill you took."

"I didn't say you didn't matter. I- -I don't think we should talk about—"

"Just like I thought. You want me to open up, but you're not willing to do the same," he insisted.

She sighed, breathing out slowly, and again continued even though her head warned her not to, "I had to run away. I'd prided myself on not running away, never backing down from a fight, for a long time. But I was so devastated. Sad. Betrayed and confused. So that was really hard. It was hard to admit that I needed some distance. It was hard to admit that I needed some help. I was lost. I'm lucky I had Rachel, because I had to keep it together for her, being a mom kept me grounded, even though some mornings it was hard to find the energy to get up and make her breakfast. It was hard to play and keep a smile on my face for her when I felt so empty. I took a couple of months off work before I started my new job. I found a really good therapist who I saw multiple times a week for months. I still see her almost every week. I had to really be honest with myself. And that's not easy. There's no magic pill. I didn't ask you how you feel about Wilson to poke around in your head. I asked because I don't want the pressure in you to build until you break."

"I broke a long time ago." House took out his own coffee, sipping it to buy time. He definitely seemed surprised by her response. "You said all of that to force me to talk about Wilson?"

"You know what? There were no strings attached to my confession. You're right. I'm watching us from the safety of an observation room while wearing a hazmat suit. I'm…going to _cautiously_ step out of the observation room." His eyes lifted to her, filled with a hint of hope through a mountain of despair. "But I'm not ready to get rid of the hazmat suit yet."

He just barely nodded.

"Are we still taking Wilson out on a date today?" she asked.

"He'll need the wheelchair," House answered softly.

"I'll let you know what time I'll be by to pick you up." As the door began to close, she added, "Thanks for the coffee."


	3. Part III: Lasts

_A/N: Someone mentioned in a review that my date at the beginning was wrong (thanks for pointing out what you saw). The reviewer's logic made complete sense, but I also got the date of his approximate death from a biography from someone else who had an interpretation of the timeline. Since the show didn't often let us know exactly what the story timeline dates were (they obviously weren't all corresponding to actual air dates) and it's open to multiple interpretations, I decided to remove the date from the beginning and I'll just say it is post series. Another reviewer asked if Cuddy left New Jersey...Yes, she moved away from New Jersey. I haven't mentioned any other location details in this story. Thanks for all of your questions and comments.  
_

* * *

**Part III: Lasts  
**

In a little over an hour, Cuddy was on her way to pick up Wilson and House. This was important enough to her to clear her schedule and show up on a Tuesday morning when she probably had a thousand things to do, and the significance of that was not lost on her friends. It took almost that long just to get Wilson ready to leave. He had occasionally ventured out onto the porch, but he hadn't really gone out anywhere since he'd been admitted to the hospital.

Cuddy watched out of the corner of her eye as Wilson seemed to be drinking in the city as they drove, looking at every storefront and squinting contentedly when the sun was too bright for his eyes. It was a chilly day, but the sun beamed and the sky was crystal blue, and Wilson enjoyed every second of it.

The theater had been fastidiously repaired by movie buffs and local historians, and it looked exactly like one of the theaters from the 1940s. "This is pretty cool," Wilson said. Cuddy had chosen 'Ordinary People' from the list of available films, and they actually listed the film on the marquee.

He didn't argue when they used a wheelchair to bring him up to the theater, but once they were inside, he stubbornly stood, and insisted, "I'm walking in." Cuddy came up next to him, threading her arm through his like she simply wanted to walk arm-in-arm with her friend, but they all knew she was concerned that he'd lose his balance.

They only went across the foyer and into the small theater when his body already seemed to be tiring out. Once they'd walked three rows in from the back, Wilson leaned against one of the seats, acting like he was looking at the theater rather than admitting he was too tired to take another step, "Let me look around," he said as he tried to gather more strength. Determination could only take him so far.

After a few minutes, Wilson pointed two rows further, right to the middle, and said, "That's the perfect spot."

Wilson and Cuddy settled in, but House hadn't joined them. He trudged down the aisle a few minutes later with snacks for the movie and took a seat on the other side of Wilson. As soon as the three were seated, the heavy, dark green curtain rose, uncovering the screen just like it would have long ago.

Wilson stared at the movie with a faint smile nearly the entire time he watched, politely picking at the snacks House had bought even though it was obvious he didn't really want to eat them. A few times during the movie, Cuddy was pretty certain Wilson actually dozed off for a few seconds. It was hard to enjoy the film entirely, though, because in the seconds between music and dialog, none of them could truly forget the circumstance that had brought them all together again.

When the movie ended, Wilson clapped and thanked his friends and said, "That was truly fantastic."

One of the staffers at the theater had seen the wheelchair in the hall and brought it down the aisle. When Wilson allowed himself to be wheeled out, his friends were relieved that he wouldn't have to struggle up the ramp. They got to the car and within a few moments, Wilson was sleeping. Cuddy glanced over her shoulder and asked House, "Should we skip the bar? Think it's too much?"

House leaned between the front seats, quickly assessed Wilson and said, "Take the scenic route. Give him a few minutes to rest. He'll like the bar."

Wilson slept for nearly an hour before he started to stir, so they drove to their second destination. Cuddy had rented the entire back room. They had their own bartender and fully functioning bar so that Wilson wouldn't have to feel like people were gawking at him. Fortunately the barstools had backs, so Wilson took a seat and started looking at the drink menu.

The bartender stepped up, greeting them and first asking Wilson what he wanted. The bartender was probably in her early forties, quite pretty, with a sweet looking face and a kind voice with just a hint of a southern accent. When Wilson had trouble deciding what to drink, she offered him a few small samples of the beers on tap. As she served House and Cuddy she asked, "So what's the occasion?"

"We all used to work together," Cuddy piped up, trying to prevent the mood from souring. "It's a reunion of sorts."

"And I have cancer," Wilson said bluntly. "So they're being nice and taking me out someplace other than a hospital."

"Where'd you work?" the bartender asked.

"We're all doctors. We worked at the same hospital," Cuddy answered as House scoffed.

They never mentioned the exact hospital by name, but Wilson started to talk about how he'd gotten his job at Princeton-Plainsboro, which led him to tell stories about when he'd first met House, and within a few minutes, all three were regaling the bartender with tales of the days they'd spent together. They'd barely mentioned the old hospital in the previous weeks. It had seemed, understandably, to be a taboo subject until that night.

They watched as Wilson laughed, quieter than normal, but with no less honesty. For a little over an hour, even House seemed more like he'd been when times weren't so somber. No one talked about the worst of times, not because they were actively avoiding them, but just because they were remembering when things were good. House and Wilson both claimed victory in their nearly career-long prank war. Cuddy heard a few of the things they'd done for the first time, often shaking her head and sometimes laughing in spite of herself.

Wilson had only taken a few sips of his beer, but he seemed sort of tipsy. Cuddy was slowly nursing a drink since she would be driving. House had definitely consumed more than anyone else, but he was pacing himself. He seldom drank to excess in recent weeks. Wilson needed House to be at least somewhat sober in case there was an emergency. They were all sort of relaxed and content, almost happy. Those were the only minutes when anyone had truly forgotten why they were there. Then, the first time there was a pause in the conversation, Wilson seemed to grow tired, and the happier mood dulled.

"I had cancer," the bartender said to him. "Stage 3 breast." He looked up at her, and she showed him a small breast cancer survivor ribbon tattoo on the inside of her wrist. "I guess the tattoo was a little premature, but when I survived a year, I decided to celebrate and do something wild. If you can consider a tattoo a little bigger than a postage stamp wild. But I know how you feel. I was where you are. Double mastectomy and shitloads of chemo, and here I am today."

Wilson didn't choose to inform her of the seriousness of his condition, but instead leaned forward on the bar and asked, "You're cancer-free?"

"For now. I feel this tremendous relief every time they run tests and the results still look okay. Then, within a couple of weeks, I start to worry again…like I'm getting ready for the next test. It's hard…sitting around, waiting to find out if you're going to live or die. Isn't it?"

He nodded, "I always thought I was sympathetic to my patients, but, until you're actually going through it, it's hard to understand what it's like. I can't stop thinking about it."

"No. You can't. Even now, it's often on my mind. If I go out on a date, when am I supposed to tell him there's only a thirty-to-thirty-five percent chance I'll still be alive in four years? I get tired of everyone looking at me like I'm to be pitied. Ya know?"

Wilson and the bartender slipped into their own conversation at the end of the bar. House got up and chose a few songs on a digital player that was designed to look like a juke box. Cuddy subtly watched him, guessing that he probably chose to do that rather than talk to her. When he came back though, he sat on the other side of her instead of next to Wilson, reaching across the front of her to grab his drink from the spot where he'd sat.

"Are you uncomfortable?" Cuddy asked.

"Why should I be uncomfortable? I'm sitting here with my only friend, who is currently dying, and my ex-girlfriend, who hates me. I know how to party," House replied.

"I don't hate you."

"You probably do," he said, poking the condensation on his glass, "you're just forgetting that you hate me because you're feeling sentimental due to Wilson's condition."

"No. I know what hate feels like. And I don't hate you. I kinda miss you. I actually miss you more now that you're back in my life than I did when I thought you were dead. How fucked up is that?"

"I'm not back in your life."

"Well, you and I are sitting at a bar, having a drink with Wilson. This evening is part of my life. The last few weeks are part of my life so…I'd say you're in it."

He leaned his forearms on the bar and seemed to almost immediately be dragged down into his funk. "Are you still in there somewhere?" she asked. "I see glimpses of it when you're with Wilson, but most of the time, you don't even seem to really be there. I know it's hard because-"

"I'm the same as I've always been," he interrupted, continuing his determined mission to smooth all of the droplets of condensation on his glass into one even layer of moisture.

"You're not you though. I mean, I see you. You look like you, mostly. You sound like you. You walk like you, but it's not you."

"This is the only me. The same man you've over-therapeutized yourself to forget."

"I went to therapy because I was falling apart at the seams and I didn't know what else to do. Not to forget you."

"If you spent more time with me, you'd remember…you don't actually _like_ me. I frustrate you. I annoy you. I hurt you. I pushed you from the job you loved, from the hospital you mothered, and destroyed any chance that we could even possibly be friends again someday. Although, friendship is a shitty second prize."

Cuddy sat, stunned for a moment while she attempted to interpret. She finally said, "Thanks. That was really close to an apology—"

"No, it wasn't," he bluntly interrupted. His words smacked at her, and then he cleared his throat. "But this is. I am sorry. For all of it. It's too little, too late, but there's not much I can do about that now."

"I never expected to hear that from you."

"I'm not sure if I'll get another opportunity. We don't have much time left before the only common ground we share is gone," he said as he looked past her down the bar toward Wilson.

"You know what's so ironic?" she said. "I was really worried when I first texted you because I knew you'd have my number. And you also knew where I worked. I was convinced that you were going to start texting me at all hours to ask what I was wearing or show up at my hospital and do the sorts of things you do…I was preparing for it. Maybe even dreading it. But when you didn't do it...I dunno. I was disappointed."

"If Wilson wasn't dying, would we be having this conversation?"

"I don't know. Probably not today, but I hope one day we would have," she finished her beer and pushed the empty bottle toward the back of the bar. Resting her hands in her lap, she turned to him and said, "I'm sorry, too. For hurting you. For all of it."

"Your therapist would probably have you involuntarily committed if she knew what you were up to lately," he said, clearly changing the subject.

"She knows."

He turned, slowly, "You told her?"

"Everything I talk to her about is confidential, so—"

"I'm just surprised you'd admit it to her."

"Why?"

"Because the situation is messy and complicated and getting involved is probably not the best decision you've ever made. She probably didn't suggest 'hang out with House' as one of the ways to promote your mental health."

Cuddy laughed a little and replied, "What's the point in going to therapy if I'm not going to be honest?" He shrugged, looking at her for longer than he had since they'd re-met as he tried to observe his way to a greater understanding.

They heard the bartender laugh at something Wilson had said, and saw Wilson and the bartender subtly flirting at the other end of the bar. House muttered, "He still has his Wilsonish charm."

"It's so weird that the private party bartender just happened to be a cancer survivor. Pretty crazy coincidence."

House lifted his drink to his lips, but before drinking said, "There are no coincidences."

Cuddy nodded and then turned, suspiciously, "You did this?"

"I _may _have had a hand in bringing her to this specific place at this specific time."

"Is that a _hooker_?" Cuddy whispered, scandalized.

"No. Although I tried that first. They were convinced that I wanted someone who _looked_ like they had cancer. I guess that's a type."

"That's sick, House."

"I didn't say it was _my _type…I knew he'd spot a fraud a mile away, so I didn't want someone to _pretend_ they had cancer, I wanted someone who knew what it was actually like."

"So how did you find her?"

He leaned a little closer and confessed, "Before I met you at the hospital this morning, I went shopping on your oncology floor."

"Shopping?"

"Sort of. I saw her in the waiting room, saw the survivor tattoo. She's cute. Wilson likes cute. Thought she'd catch his eye."

"You think he's looking to meet women?"

"Wilson likes the idea of falling in love. The newness, the excitement, the flirting, the thrill of meeting someone new. I thought he'd like to have that one more time. And I assumed someone who knew what it was like to have cancer would be a little more understanding about his current condition. I got her number, called her after you told me which bar we were going to, then I guilted the owner here into letting her sling us some drinks. Don't ask her for anything complicated. She's never bartended a day in her life. Until today. I didn't tell her to flirt with him though. He did that on his own."

Cuddy sat in silence for a few seconds and then abruptly got up. "I'll be back," she muttered as she fled.

House sat at the bar for a minute or so after she left, trying to figure out why she'd left so abruptly. He tried not to care about why she'd left, but it bugged him, so he followed her. He flung the door to the ladies' room open and she was standing over the sink, leaning toward the mirror, trying to blot away tears without leaving a trace. "What in the hell did I do now?" he asked loudly before he came in and let the door drift shut.

"What are you doing in here? You're not allowed to follow me in here."

"I want to know why you ran off. You're that pissed that I switched bartenders?"

"No," she replied, leaning back against the sink.

"Then why the sudden escape?"

"You're not going to like my answer. So just drop it."

"Now I really want to know."

Cuddy sighed, closing her eyes and weighing her options. Then she said, "It was sweet. What you did."

"What?"

"I think it's sweet. He's happy right now. See. I told you you wouldn't like the answer."

"You're crying because you think I did something nice?"

"I'm not crying," she insisted.

He tilted his head and squinted, pushing for an answer without actual words.

"There was a tear," she admitted. "It's sad that he's at the point in his life where he's doing things for the last time. Sometimes that hits me. And what you did for him was really thoughtful. I was just touched by it and I needed a moment alone. Now get out of here. You don't belong in the ladies' room!"

"Less than five minutes ago you were complaining about me not showing up in inappropriate places. Now I'm here, in an inappropriate place, and you're complaining again."

She smiled and shook her head, "I know."

He stepped closer and said, "This is proof that you don't really miss me. You're feeling nostalgic. Your judgment is clouded because Wilson is dying."

"So is yours," she countered. "After all of the separation we've had, all the work I've done—"

"Countless hours of therapy," he dramatically added.

"Sure. Countless hours of therapy. I've done a lot of work to try to figure out what happened. My part in it. Your part in it. Why I was so drawn to you for so long. Why I didn't walk away before. Why I acted the way I did and said the things I said. Everything. And yet, after all of that, I still missed you. And I'm here. Today. With you. You still matter to me, and I don't think you should deal with all of this alone."

"That's called guilt."

"No. It's not. Now, you need to get out of here. I may be oddly relieved by this mini-invasion, but other women may not appreciate it like I do. And this is a public bathroom."

A moment later, a woman from another part of the bar walked in. When she saw House, she looked at the sign on the door to make sure she had the right restroom. Before she could say anything, he walked out.

They joined Wilson again. The bartender was talking quietly with him, the two obviously sharing very deep conversation. Wilson looked completely wiped out, like he might fall asleep sitting on his stool in the bar, but he still looked happy. House stood next to Wilson and said, "I hate to break up your date, but I'm tired. You ready to go?"

Wilson agreed, thanking the bartender, "It was so nice to meet you."

"Here's my number," she said, sliding a napkin across the bar and touching his hand. "When you're feeling a little better, give me a call. Or even if you just want to talk. You can kick this thing."

Wilson, House and Cuddy all froze for a moment, all knowing perfectly well that Wilson would never recover. Wilson, his voice weary, said, "Thank you again. I had a really nice time." He took the napkin, carefully folded it and put it in his wallet.

When they went outside, the sun was just beginning to set. Their 'wild night out' was more of an afternoon, and ended just before dusk. Wilson slept in the car. His energy was completely sapped. House and Cuddy helped Wilson inside, and then helped him get to bed. Lying there, he smiled at both of them.

"I'm sorry if it was too much, Wilson," Cuddy apologized.

"It wasn't," Wilson replied. "It was perfect. I had…a wonderful day. It was good having us all together again. Thank you both so much."

Cuddy kissed Wilson's forehead and whispered, "I'll see you in the morning."

House followed her to the front door. "No goodnight kiss for me?"

"He had fun," Cuddy replied as she pulled her keys out of her pocket. "We did a good job. That bartender…that was a stroke of genius."

"We pulled it off," he answered, but he wasn't focused.

"Are you okay?"

"Why do you keep asking me that?"

"I keep asking because you've never answered. And…I'm worried about you."

"You really want to know?" he asked, his sadness underscored with frustration.

She clenched her jaw, readying herself for whatever response may come from him, and she nodded, "Yes. I do."

"It hurts so much that I'm not even sure if I feel it anymore," he said, the words forcing their way to the surface. "So I'm pretty fucking far from okay."

He was relieved when she didn't try to plaster him with useless words of hope or say something to make him feel better that would only amplify his ache. She reached out for him, her fingers wrapping around him just above his wrist, and she squeezed his forearm, like she was hugging him without getting too close. He certainly didn't pull away from her touch. In fact, his eyes revealed the pain and longing he'd tried to keep hidden even from himself, and she felt the vast expanse of emotions that were buried beneath the surface. And then, as if a switch flipped, his expression became blank again, but he still didn't pull away.

"Should I go?" she asked, part of her hoping that he'd tell her to stay so he wouldn't be alone with his thoughts while Wilson slept.

He nodded. "See you tomorrow?"

"I'll be here in the morning before work. Around eight."

"Goodnight," House answered, watching the way her fingers let go and hesitantly slipped from his arm.


	4. Part IV: Tired

**Part IV: Tired**

* * *

After leaving Wilson and House, Cuddy returned home. The evening had been a short one, but at least Rachel was still awake. Cuddy had been careful to spend evenings with Rachel, even while looking out for Wilson. She'd visited him before or during work, or even some nights after Rachel went to bed, but she did her best to share dinner and time with the girl before each day was done.

"Sorry I missed dinner," Cuddy said as she walked into the playroom.

"Hey, Mom," Rachel said. "Have a problem at the hospital?"

Cuddy sat on the floor next to her daughter, moving a few pieces of miniature food into a dollhouse-sized store. "Actually, no. The friend I told you about who's sick. I was with him."

"Oh," Rachel replied, moving the final few pieces into place. "Is he okay?"

"He had a good day." Cuddy continued to watch her daughter play until she said, "I have an idea. Go brush your teeth, and, if you want, you can watch a show in my room tonight."

Cuddy didn't even finish the thought and Rachel was already dashing out of the room. Cuddy smiled as she turned out the light and closed the playroom door. They had occasionally had nights when they would watch a movie in Cuddy's room, spreading out on the big bed, but never on a school night.

When Rachel ran into the room, the pillows were all stacked and Cuddy was finishing up some emails from work. They watched a show on a tablet computer, curled up under the blankets. After the show was over, Cuddy could tell Rachel was pretending to sleep in the hopes that her mother would let her stay there for the night. Cuddy went along with the ruse because she had no desire to be alone, and it was nice to concentrate on something in her life that didn't hurt. She watched as Rachel's pretend sleep became real sleep. As she considered how fortunate she felt that she wasn't alone, Cuddy couldn't help but think of what would happen to House after Wilson was gone.

It wasn't long before she fell asleep as well. There was something about emotional exhaustion that translated so easily into physical exhaustion. She slept fitfully, though, worrying all night about Wilson's condition and House's emotional and mental state. She knew too well that Wilson would likely not make it much longer, and she wondered if that would be the trigger that would send House hurdling over the edge.

She woke from her fitful sleep when she heard the chime of a text message. Reaching over to her phone on the end table, she saw a text from Wilson. '_Rough night. Can you come a little earlier?'_

'_Want me to come now?' _Cuddy texted back.

'_No. Get some sleep. Come around __5\. Please,' _Wilson answered.

'_No problem.'_

'_Thanks," _Wilson replied.

Cuddy stared at the ceiling for a while, unable to get back to sleep after the text. There was no need for Wilson to suffer any longer than necessary. So she got up, leaving Rachel to rest peacefully in the huge bed alone. After a quick shower, Cuddy made arrangements for Rachel, gathered the medication she needed, and began the drive to the apartment.

The lights in the apartment were still out, so Cuddy quietly used her key and entered. She walked back the hall to Wilson's room. House's door popped open and he emerged, dressed in his pajamas, obviously woken from sleep and holding his cane like a club. She flipped on the hallway light so he could see her. "It's you," House grumbled, lowering his cane. He leaned back against the wall as he tried to rid the sleep from his brain, and then he asked, "Why are you here so early?"

"Wilson texted," she replied. "He's having a bad night."

"He didn't tell me," House said, roughly hobbling down the hall using both his cane and the wall for support. He stepped around her and opened Wilson's door.

The moment they saw Wilson's still figure in the bed, they both knew their friend was gone. The room felt strikingly devoid of life long before they could take his vitals to verify. House checked for a pulse as Cuddy sat on the chair next to Wilson's bed and placed her hand on his chest in a silent good-bye. "He must have known," Cuddy mumbled.

"Then why call you? If he didn't need drugs—"

"He didn't ask for drugs. He only said that he wanted me to come around five. If I had to guess, I'd say he didn't want you to be alone when you found him."

Cuddy saw Wilson's phone on his chest beneath his hand and picked it up. There was one unsent text on the screen. It was to both House and Cuddy and simply said, _'Thank you for everything.'_

She handed the phone to House so he could see it, and she knew he sent the text through when both of their phones beeped.

She mourned softly for Wilson's pain, for the loss of him, and even for House. There was no last minute reprieve, no miracle cure, no chance to snatch Wilson from the jaws of death. There weren't any last minute words or deathbed secrets, just a weary body finally accepting an inevitable end in the dark of night.

House remained there, his face completely stony. Cuddy assumed he wanted privacy, so she stood, and said, "I'll give you time to say goodbye."

She took a seat in the living room in the recliner Wilson had used since he had arrived, and then her tears really began to flow as she rocked in his chair. As imminent as the end had appeared to be, it still seemed impossible that he was already gone. Her quiet moment was over when House left Wilson's room after only a minute or two, loudly announcing, "What's the point in saying goodbye? There's no one there to listen. He's dead. It's over. Or are you going to try to comfort me with stories of spirits rising, freed from the prison of their bodies?"

"Of course not. I just thought you might want—"

"We both knew this would happen."

"That doesn't change the fact that it hurts that he's gone," she argued. "It sucks that he had to go through this. He didn't deserve it."

"Cancer doesn't care who _deserves_ it. It's a fucking disease. And like any other fucking disease, it doesn't have a conscience or a moral compass. It can be genetic, it can be environmental, it can be completely fucking unexpected. But it doesn't discriminate based on the host's deeds or quality of character."

"That's a very logical response."

"It's the only response."

"No. It isn't. He was an important part of your life and—"

"Don't try to analyze me," he sneered.

"I'm not trying to _analyze_ you. I am trying to be understanding about how you might be feeling."

"I don't need your understanding either."

"Fine. If you want to be logical and reasonable right now, I can do that. We've come this far, so let's finish this together. Okay?"

"Finish what?"

"Wilson left me with some instructions. He wants his remains sent to his family."

"He didn't tell _me_ that."

Cuddy showed him a paper with some handwritten instructions that Wilson had left on a bookshelf in the apartment. She cleared her throat and said, "He didn't want you to have to deal with these details. I said I would."

House took the paper and looked it over. "I could have handled it."

"I know. But I think he wanted to make sure you could maintain your anonymity so you wouldn't go to prison."

"Or he thought I'd say fuck it and get high."

"I think he didn't want to burden you."

"So what's the plan?"

"When you're done saying goodbye—or whatever. Whenever you're ready…I'll call his family and someone to collect his remains. I'll handle the logistics. I thought that you and I could have our own sendoff for him. His family wants to have a traditional burial and—"

"He didn't want all that," House grumbled.

"Agreed. Which is why I thought we could have our own memorial. Just the two of us."

* * *

Cuddy hadn't really been paying a lot of attention to House while she made the necessary calls. Talking to Wilson's mother was so much more difficult than Cuddy had anticipated. She kept trying to get the answers she needed for the arrangements, but the woman was understandably upset over the death of her son. The old woman wondered why her son had left, why he hadn't come to say goodbye one more time, and what had happened in the last few months that had made him seem so distant. Cuddy assured her that dying was difficult and each person had to deal with cancer in their own way. She even told Mrs. Wilson that she hadn't heard from Wilson for quite a long time either, but the mother was still heartbroken, sobbing into the phone. When Cuddy ran out of ways to try to help Mrs. Wilson, she just listened and tried to wait patiently for the information she needed. She'd sat through a thousand similar conversations with patient families at the hospital, but dealing with the death of someone she had truly cared for was different.

After Mrs. Wilson, Cuddy made several other calls, and, when she was finished, she found House in Wilson's room, going through the few things that Wilson had with him. "They'll be coming by shortly to transport the body. We contacted a service to have him flown home, so we'll keep him at the hospital until then," she said. "Is that alright with you?"

"It's his funeral, ask him," House dejectedly answered.

Cuddy stood in the doorway for a few moments, and wanted to try to talk to him, but she could see how narrowly he was keeping himself composed, so she decided to wait until after the transporters left. After all, she knew how hard he had been working to keep from falling apart so he could be there for Wilson. She knew he would eventually break, and when that happened, it was not going to be pretty.

The transporters came more quickly than she'd imagined. For those two people who'd come to get the body, it was a perfectly ordinary day. She watched them as they worked, wanting to ensure that her friend was treated with the respect he deserved even after his death. They were following protocols, carrying on a list of duties for which they would be paid. They were punching the clock. They were respectful, as they'd been trained to be, but, to them, the man they were taking was just another body in a long line of bodies, not the first or last corpse they'd see. Part of her thought about telling them about who that man had been. That this wasn't an ordinary job and an ordinary body on an ordinary day. This was Dr. James Wilson, oncologist. He was a friend. He'd had girlfriends and wives and parents and brothers. He'd had patients who thought he was a miracle worker, patients he'd truly cared about. He'd managed, the day before his death, to charm a fake bartender out of her phone number. He had been funny and loyal. He had been a meddler and a matchmaker. He was more than a patient ID, date of birth, and time and place of death.

He _mattered_.

Even as she thought of trying to impart on those two nameless employees the significance of their job that day, she knew what they'd do. They'd politely listen and offer condolences. They'd look at her like any other grieving person left behind. They'd probably respectfully ask her to step out of the room and let them do their work. So she kept her thoughts to herself and allowed them to continue with their duties.

As she saw them slip the covered gurney into the back of their vehicle and drive off without flashing lights or sirens, the whole thing seemed undeniably final. She heard movement in the back part of the apartment, and her thoughts turned to the still living man left behind. She wasn't really sure if she'd be able to help House get through the next few days, but she couldn't allow him to disappear into numbness without trying. She was certain that Wilson had been right, and that House would inevitably do himself harm if left on his own. Maybe, if she could get him through his first few days of mourning, he'd find a way to rebound.

When she heard a loud crash from House's bedroom, her heart stopped, because she was concerned that he was already dead. She ran back to the room, her eyes filling with tears for what felt like the hundredth time that day as she wondered if she'd given him too much space while she took care of things. He was a crumpled mess on the floor. His forehead was bleeding, and he was in obvious pain, but he was still alive. He'd clearly hit his head, and a chair was on its side. At first she worried that he had tried to hang himself, but when she saw that he'd opened the access panel to the crawl space in the ceiling, she knew that suicide hadn't been his intent. She asked, "What in the hell were you doing up there?"

House groaned, pulling himself to a sitting position without offering an answer.

"What do you have up there?" she questioned.

"I was packing my things," he answered.

She looked around the room, seeing a partially packed bag on the bed and one already packed by the door. "That wasn't really the answer to my question," she replied. He had no answer for her, though, as he rubbed the leg that didn't usually hurt.

Cuddy picked up the chair, positioned it beneath the opening into the attic and stood on it. As she balanced, she couldn't quite see through the opening, so she reached up to feel for whatever he'd stashed. "Don't," she heard him say from the floor. "Just leave it."

She stopped her search, momentarily letting her arms drop to her sides as she looked at him. His eyes were closed, his skin ashen, and misery radiated from him in a way she'd seen on very few occasions before. For a moment, she hesitated, torn between whether or not she wanted to retrieve and dispose of whatever she found in the ceiling or if she wanted to respect his wish. When she finally stepped down, he briefly nodded his appreciation.

"Okay," she said, sitting on the edge of the chair.

His eyes found her, somewhat surprised that she'd actually stepped back from her search.

"You have to leave _today_?" she asked. "Big plans?"

"I know the _rules_," he snipped.

"_You _are more hung up on these rules than I am. Which rules are we talking about here?"

"The Wilson truce. You didn't let _me_ crash here, you let _him_ crash here and you knew he'd drag me along with or without your approval, so you just didn't bother fighting it."

"I'm not actually cruel enough to kick you to the curb hours after your best friend died. I'll be back," she said, walking toward the hallway.

She returned with folded paper towels and pointed toward his forehead, "Put pressure on that. You're bleeding." He took what was offered, bracing his elbow on his knee and pressing the towels above his eye. She sat nearby on the floor, facing him. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Why do you keep asking that? Do you really fucking think I'm okay?"

"I meant from the fall. Do we need to go to the hospital? Is anything broken?"

"No," he answered less confrontationally. "Nothing that won't heal."

"I just want you to know that I'm here. If you—"

"But for how fucking long? How long before my allotted bereavement time is over? Three days? A week? A month?" he interrupted.

"What's your point?"

"You want me to open up, hold your hand and talk about how I feel. You keep telling me you're here for me, but then what? How long until you're gone, too? Then I get to relive the _joy_ of losing you again right after losing Wilson. I'll pass."

"I'm not sure what it is that you want from me."

"Nothing. Just don't ask me to tell _you_ how I feel."

"Talking to me is risky for you. I get that. You don't think it's a risk for me to be here? You don't think I'm worried about how all of this is going to turn out, and if I'm going to get hurt?"

"If you're worried, leave. It's safer for you that way. For me, too. I'd rather you leave now than _tell_ me you're gonna be here for me, and just when I _really_ start to believe you, you decide you can't stand to be around me anymore."

"Is this the right time to do this? You _really_ want to start airing our old relationship grievances now? Because I have plenty."

"This is as good a time as any."

"This is _not_ what's really bothering you right now. You're looking for something else, _anything_ other than the fact that you lost your best friend, to distract you from how you feel. No matter what I do, I can't distract you well enough to erase the pain of losing him."

"Makes sense. He couldn't distract me enough to erase the pain of losing you either," House said, meeting her eyes and refusing to look away as the towels he'd been holding on his head fell to the floor.

"This isn't about us."

"My misery isn't compartmentalized according to who or what caused it."

She took the paper towels that had fallen from his head, and pressed them back against his wound, holding his face still with her other hand. Her touch seemed to threaten his control, like that piece of human contact could destroy his already overtaxed defenses.

"I wish you'd stop being so damn cruel to yourself," she commented as she tried to check his pupils, but he kept turning his head away so she couldn't quite complete her task.

"You first," he grumbled.

She checked the gash over his eye next and asked, "Is that what I'm doing? I'm being cruel to you?"

For a moment while she was that close, he seemed to let his guard lower just a bit, and she saw the way he was looking at her. So pained, yet uncertain and disconnected, and he shook his head. "Not yet. I'm proactively dreading the moment you come to your senses."

"Isn't there enough to deal with right now without worrying about something that hasn't even happened yet?"

"I was right the last time, wasn't I?"

"It would have been better if we both would have agreed it was doomed from the start?" she skeptically questioned.

"I would have been prepared. Or better yet, we would have ended it long before anyone got hurt."

"Well, I'm not exactly sure when that hurt-free cutoff point would have been," she said, frustration growing. She knew someone had to try to keep things from spinning out of control, so she tried to refocus, and added more sensibly, "You had a great, unique, unbreakable friendship with Wilson. If you would have known he'd die this way…that you'd lose him…would you have avoided the friendship from the beginning so you wouldn't have to feel hurt now? Think of all you would have missed out on over the years."

"There is one striking difference between the two situations. Wilson didn't _want_ to leave."

Cuddy felt the intended stab in his words, and tried again to check his pupils. She could see the pain building in him, the level seeming increasingly unmanageable. His eyes were red, the tears looked like they wanted to flow, but were held in by an invisible barrier. She thought he was finally going to give in to the pain of losing Wilson, and then something seemed to change. For a moment, he let her get a good look at his pupils, but he grabbed her wrist and asked, "Who's with Rachel?"

Cuddy looked at an alarm clock on House's nightstand and she replied, nonplussed, "She's at school."

"But who was with her when you came here this morning before dawn? Or the nights when you came here after bedtime?"

"The nanny," Cuddy answered, shortly.

"Does he know you call him that?"

"_She_…does know that I call her that. Because that is what she is. That's what I pay her for."

"Don't lie to me," he said more angrily. "This _nanny _just happened to be at your place in the middle of the night?"

Cuddy leaned just a little closer, looking him right in the eye and trying to make sure she had his focus, "Yes. Because she lives with us."

"You need a live-in nanny?" he countered, trying just once more to hold onto his disbelief.

"I'm a single mother who works fifty to sixty hour workweeks in a city where I have no friends or family. I'm on my own out here. I needed someone who could be available when I get called into the hospital for emergencies or get held up in a meeting."

His grip loosened a little but he didn't let go, relaxing his arm until his hand fell against his chest. He still held her forearm, much like she had held his the night before when she had said goodbye. It seemed he was hoping for an argument, for some anger to cling to instead of feeling the loss that loomed. His last ditch effort failed, and he was too overwhelmed to mount another argument.

"He's gone," House finally conceded. "The one person I couldn't get rid of. It's all over. Everything. My body is fucked. No cases. No team. No home. No you. No Wilson. I have…nothing." He looked up toward the opening in the ceiling and added through gritted teeth, "I can't even self-medicate anymore without falling on my ass."

"You're right. Wilson is gone. I can't tell you how much I wish I could change that," she admitted. "But you are _not_ alone."

"Until you're gone, too."

She touched his cheek, holding his face in her hand. He was angry, every vibration that was coming from him was pushing her away, but she didn't move. "None of this can be fixed. My life can't be fixed, my leg can't be fixed, you and I can't be fixed, Wilson can't be brought back," he growled. "All of these things, irreparable. Final."

She wasn't pushed away, though. She was undeterred, unafraid, and unexpectedly certain, "That's too many problems to try to address in one day. Let's take this in smaller bites."

"Okay. You're going to figure out how to bring Wilson back?" he angrily countered.

"No. We're going to say goodbye to our friend. Cry, laugh, yell, talk about the memories, wish for the things we could have done, whatever…all of those things that people do when they lose someone. I'm here because I'm concerned that you—"

"No. That's not why you're here," he interrupted. "I'm completely aware of the reason why you're here."

"Care to enlighten me since I'm obviously confused about my motivations?" she sarcastically responded.

"You're here because of some dying request from Wilson to babysit me until—"

"You're _not_ always right, House," she answered directly.

"Oh, come on. You really want me to believe that he didn't try to guilt you into taking responsibility for me?"

"He didn't. All that he asked was that I didn't turn you in to the authorities. He wanted you to have your freedom. That's it."

"You're lying."

"I'm not. I'm here because I choose to be here. And no, it's not because Wilson died or I feel guilty or any of those things you want to attribute it to. I'm here because, after everything, how you feel and where you are and whether or not you're okay still matters to me. But we can't possibly figure everything out right now, so let's just get through the next few days. Let's just try not to make things _worse_, agree to _try_ not to cause each other unnecessary pain, while we deal with all of this one heartbreak at a time. We're bruised enough without beating the hell out of each other."

His brow furrowed as the lines on his face seemed to draw deeper and his eyes peered at her from a sea of red. She'd been bracing herself for what she thought was an inevitable blowup. He'd been close several times that day. She stayed right next to him, trying to be a steady presence in his world as she awaited whatever eruption of pain and frustration came from him, and hoped that, whatever it was, it wouldn't drive the final wedge between them. As much as she wanted to be there for him, there were lines she knew she simply couldn't allow him to cross. Just as she was certain he was about to snap, his head dropped and he slouched down, and she realized he didn't even have the will to fight her. He didn't have the energy to blowup or enough motivation to press the right buttons to spark the argument that probably could have kept his sorrow at bay for a few minutes longer.

She hadn't expected that. In a way, it was more frightening. Of all of the angry, sad and confused thoughts she'd had about him in recent years, she'd never wished ruin like this upon him. His pain was absolute, his loss was total, and he seemed lost in a universe he didn't feel he had a place in anymore.

When she tried to move, he grabbed her wrist again. He didn't push her away, he was actually holding on. His jaw clenched as he said, "I am _so _tired of pain."

She nodded, feeling a tightness in the back of her throat as another wave of sorrow hit her. She sat next to him, still on the floor, leaning back against the bed and somewhat hesitantly draping her free arm over his shoulders. He leaned just a little bit toward her at first, like he was testing her touch before committing to it. She couldn't really see his face anymore, but she knew he could no longer keep his sadness trapped within. Eventually he let go of her hand, lying on the floor next to her and resting his temple on her thigh.

Neither said a word for the longest time. The only evidence of his tears was the faint dampness she thought she felt through her jeans. Her hand rested on his shoulder, offering silent, steady and persistent evidence of her presence. She knew how easily he could pull away, so she tried not to overwhelm him. He stayed there, accepting her subtle attempt at comfort. When he finally spoke, his voice was strained, heavy and nearly unrecognizable, "It doesn't make sense."

"Which part?" she asked, softly.

"I knew the facts. I wasn't in denial. I was prepared."

"I don't think you can ever _really_ be ready for the death of someone you care about. You can know you're going to lose someone. You can even know when and why it will happen…but all of that knowledge and understanding doesn't change the simple fact that he's gone. Rationalizing with your head is one thing. You make a case, consider facts and process them. But the most iron clad, logical, airtight case in the world can't always rationalize with your heart."

"Hmph," he quietly grunted back.

He stayed there for a while longer, moving just a bit closer to her over time. After a long silence, she started to wonder if he'd fallen asleep. "House?" she whispered softly enough that she wouldn't wake him.

"Hmm?"

"I _really_ am sorry he's gone."

He breathed in so fully that she could feel his chest expand. The fact that she could feel the way he was breathing called to mind just how close they were. When he finally exhaled, he replied, "Me too."


	5. Part V: Journey's End

_A/N-This took a bit longer since it was originally supposed to be two chapters, but I couldn't find a spot where I wanted to break it. So…here's a longish chapter. I wanted to get it posted today just in case someone wanted something to read while they ate cake after work___…for example. ;)_ Thanks so much to all of those who are interested and reading along. I truly appreciate your comments, favs and follows. _

_To answer the question from the reviewer (Jemina Pinola) who asked about whether or not Cuddy kept in touch with Wilson after she left PPTH via emails, skype, etc... I'd assumed, at least in my mind, that they had probably spoken or communicated on a few occasions, mostly before he and House began their roadtrip. Since she didn't initially recognize Wilson in the advanced stages of his illness, I don't think they would have had a recent video chat. She also mentioned that Wilson "disappeared" after House died and she asked Wilson about where he'd been. __At least that was kind of how I'd imagined it, but it's open to interpretation. I hope that answers your question.  
_

* * *

**Part V: Journey's End_  
_**

House remained there on the floor for quite some time. He could hear doubts swirling around him, but they seemed more distant than normal. Everything felt different, like he was floating far below the surface in a vast ocean. The sounds of the usual thoughts in his head were muffled. His limbs seemed to move more slowly, like they were dragging through the water, and he was fighting just to move. Perhaps worst of all, he could feel the weight of the water pressing against his body from every direction. And he was cold. So cold. At least those voices of doubt were too inaudible to really reach him. He knew they were probably asking what in the hell he was doing with his head on Cuddy's thigh. They were probably telling him that whatever this comfort was, it didn't really _fix_ anything.

Those nagging doubts and reminders were drowned out in his murky mind, and all he could really hear was one small request that came from deep within him:

_Just one minute more._

No matter the reason, all he wanted was a little more time there on her lap with her hand on his arm or his shoulder. He wanted one more perfectly silent minute that was free of accusations or questions, worries or theories. Seemingly against the odds, Cuddy did exactly what he wanted. She didn't say anything, after the few words they'd exchanged earlier. She didn't ask for anything or try to erase his sadness with some trite bullshit that would just irritate him. Instead, he just felt her presence, floating in his mind's vast ocean with him, and for some reason, that was better than the thought of floating alone.

After quite a long while on the floor, he stood and stumbled to the bathroom. He knew he'd have to get up some time. When he returned, Cuddy was stretching, pressing her palm against her back where she'd probably been leaning against the bedrail. He saw her eyes drift to the ceiling toward the still open panel into the crawl space. It made them both uncomfortable, seeing that gaping doorway to hidden treasures and secrets. He tried to ignore it for the moment, left the room and returned with a bottle of whiskey.

He took a hearty slug and asked, "So what's next?"

She began to answer, "You mean with—"

"I mean with Wilson."

"Well, his flight leaves early tomorrow morning. Two. The service is at eleven. They need to bury him as soon as possible. I thought we could be there when he leaves the airport and see his plane take off. If you want, over the next few days we can pack up his things. See if you want to keep any of them or donate anything. I'll be happy to help."

"And then what?"

"Small bites, House. Let's handle today and tomorrow first before we move on to what's next. And speaking of today…I'd like to meet Rachel for dinner. There's a place right down—"

"Have fun."

"Well, I was thinking, you haven't eaten all day and—"

"I'm not going. You think this is a great time for me and your kid to hang out? I don't feel like being around anyone right now, and I definitely don't feel like playing nice with mini-you."

"I'm not asking you to play nice. I- -I just don't think you should be here alone right now. You don't even have to sit with us. I'll get you your own table, by yourself, and I'll even pick up the tab."

"Do you really think that _your _presence is going to stop me from doing whatever it is that you're afraid I'm going to do?"

She intertwined her fingertips nervously in front of her and replied, "I'm hoping to at least make you think twice before you make a decision that cannot be reversed."

House took another swig from the bottle. The contents sloshed loudly against the glass as he drank and the bottle produced a dull thud as it made contact with the table. He adjusted the chair under the access panel in the ceiling and, with a groan of effort, stood on the chair. She rushed over, holding it still so it wouldn't tip.

The wooden access panel scratched along the surface above their heads as he pulled it into place and latched it. His hand clutched the back of the chair and he tried to step down, an effort that more closely resembled a crashing toward the floor than a careful descent. She'd offered her hand to help steady him, but he'd ignored it, losing his balance a bit toward the end, his shoulder crashing into her. He didn't say a word at first, but his eyes sought hers in a quiet expression of remorse. When she flashed a miniscule smile of acceptance, he mumbled, "Dangers of standing under cripples in high places."

"Come to the diner. After that, I'll come back here with you."

"And do what? Your kid needs you. I don't."

"Let's negotiate. What do you want?"

"What do I want in exchange for allowing you to monitor me?"

"In exchange for letting me help you. Just for a few days."

He walked past her, propping his pillows up against the headboard, grabbing the whiskey and flopping into bed. "Nothing. There's nothing I want except to sit here, in my bed and drink my whiskey."

He watched while she tried to decide what to do, and she eventually said to him, "Fine. I'll go meet Rachel. But I'm coming right back."

"Not much I can do to stop you."

She sighed very obviously and came closer, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Is there anything I can bring back for you?"

He pulled his covers up and roughly answered, "I'm tired. I'm going to sleep for the short while you're not here, asking how I am."

House closed his eyes and listened as Cuddy shut his door and walked down the hall. A few minutes later, the front door closed, and he was completely alone. Since he and Wilson had begun their journey together, he had very rarely been completely alone. He drank a little more, waiting to feel _anything,_ but unable to shake his underwater haze. He put the bottle on table next to him and folded his hands over his chest and closed his eyes.

He hovered around sleep, perhaps dozing for a few moments but never really able to fully fall asleep. When the front door opened again, he looked at the clock because it hadn't seemed like she'd been gone long enough for dinner. She'd actually been gone over three hours. She walked to his room, tapping softly on his door. When he didn't answer, she came in. He could feel her eyes on him, probably watching for breath. Once she was satisfied, she occupied herself in other rooms of the apartment.

He continued to half-doze for a while, finally getting up when he couldn't wait to pee any longer. He'd had a bit too much whiskey. He knew he hadn't heard Cuddy leave, so she must have still been there. She was sleeping in Wilson's recliner, an overnight bag packed on the floor beside her. In the kitchen, he found a takeout container that she'd left for him in the fridge. The fries were cold and soggy, but he started to pick at them anyway, eating a few and taking a bite from the burger before he shoved the container back into the fridge.

After going to the living room, he sat on the sofa and turned on the TV. He didn't lower the volume, so the noise from the TV woke her almost immediately. She was exhausted, that much was obvious, and she looked at the time on her phone and seemed more displeased by the lateness of the hour.

"I brought you something to eat," she said.

"Found it," he answered without looking away from the TV.

She readied herself, running around the apartment while he flipped through channels and stared at images that were never really digested by his mind. "We need to leave in a half hour," she said as she put on her shoes. He kept flipping channels, so she came over and said, "Aren't you going to get ready?"

He looked down at his clothes and replied, "I'm already ready."

He prepared for an argument, but she shrugged and said, "Fine," before she continued doing whatever she was doing.

* * *

The time had come and they took a taxi to the airport. They finally stopped at a long term parking lot that seemed far from the busyness of the terminal. House got out when they stopped, waiting while Cuddy gave the driver instructions.

After the taxi pulled away, she directed House to a bench nearby that had been put there for travelers who were waiting for a bus to take them from the parking lot to the terminal. They waited there on the bench for a few minutes before she spoke. "Are you going to ask why we're here?" she questioned.

"No need to. You're obviously going to tell me anyway," he answered.

"We'll be able to see his plane from here. This is the best spot to watch him head back east," she said as she checked the clock for the fourth time since they'd sat down. At the right time, she dug into her purse for a couple of tiny bottles of booze that she must have purchased as samples or found at a hotel mini bar. She opened each one and held them out for him to pick.

He took one and looked as a text flashed on her phone. "The transportation service," she explained. "His plane is taking off in two minutes. They provide regular updates."

Those two minutes felt long. The sky was free of clouds, which offered a beautiful view of the stars but left the night devoid of the warmth leftover from the day's sun. The night was so quiet that he thought he could hear the sound of the traffic light changing at the far end of the parking lot. Not many planes took off at that early hour. And then he heard the scratchy roar that came from far away and grew steadily closer. She didn't have to tell him it was Wilson's plane. He watched while she raised her tiny bottle in a toast, although she didn't share her words with him before she tipped her head back and let the spirit warm her throat. House followed suit, appreciating the simplicity of a toast to a friend as Wilson flew off into the night sky.

Cuddy produced two more bottles, asking, "You want another?" He took one, nodding. She held up hers and said, "To Wilson."

House tapped his bottle to hers and quickly drank it down. Seemingly out of the blue, he said, "I know what I want."

"You mean from life or…"

"You said you wanted to negotiate. I know what I want."

"It's a little late for that. I wanted you to come along with me last night so you wouldn't be alone."

"But you still want to babysit me."

"It isn't babysitting."

"Call it whatever you want. The point is, you want to keep an eye on me. I'll let you."

"Wow, thanks for _letting _me," she countered, but then paused. "What do you want?"

"I want to go to his burial."

"You're not serious? He didn't want you to be seen. Wilson definitely didn't want you to end up in jail. That's really the only thing he wanted."

"I'd prefer to avoid jail as well. I don't need to be front and center, but you keep saying we need to finish what we started with him. I agree. I need to be there, I need to throw my handful of dirt."

"We don't have long before the funeral starts. We have to find a way to fly you out there last minute. It won't be easy. I can see if there are any flights left," she said as she started to search on her phone.

"I'm not sure if my ID will make it through security," he admitted.

"We can't drive. It's too far and we'll never make it in time."

"You asked me what I want. That is what I want. You can come along, which automatically allows you to babysit. And you can hang around for a few days when we get back, help me go through his stuff. Then I'll move out of that apartment and your conscience or sense of duty or whatever the hell this is can be satisfied. You can move on feeling free and clear."

"So nice that you automatically expect the worst of me," she replied with disappointment.

"The feeling's mutual though, isn't it?"

She narrowed her eyes, and seemed to try to reign in her response when she finally answered, "House, if I expected the worst from you…I would _not _be here. In fact, I'm overlooking your worst moments to be here with you. That should count for something. Maybe you could try to do the same for me."

He paused, disconnectedly tapping his cheek with his cane. A bus arrived, dropping off a pile of travelers and their luggage. When the crowd cleared, she said as a thought occurred to her, "Private jets don't have the same security requirements as commercial airlines. Will your ID stand up to a passing glance?"

He nodded, "Yea."

"I'm not promising anything, but give me a couple of minutes to make a few calls. I'll see what I can do."

She took out her phone and started to walk away when he said, quietly, "I'm not thinking the worst of you. Having a conscience and a sense of duty aren't necessarily _bad_ traits…I just don't understand what you're doing here with me in the middle of the night, getting ready to wake up private jet owners."

He waited for a response, but Cuddy just nodded. A tense pseudo-smile emerged as she held up her phone and said, "We don't have much time. Let me make some calls."

He could hear her as she paced the sidewalk in front of him. She had to make multiple calls. Little bits and pieces of the conversations hit his ears. She was sorry to wake them, hated to ask for such a favor last minute, and she wouldn't ask unless it were truly important. The first two calls ended with polite expressions of understanding. Finally, on the third call, he saw her steps quicken hopefully as she paced, then she paused as she considered something weighty and finally replied, "George, if you can get us on a plane out of here ASAP, tell him the spot is his."

She hung up and, for a moment, she looked almost pleased until she remembered why they were flying. After calling the taxi, she said to House, "Hopefully we'll make it in time."

* * *

A little over two hours later, they were on a private jet toward the east coast. The security checks for the private jet had been laughable. "You had to move the whole way out here?" House asked as he sat in the high-end, customized passenger sofa. "Why _Oregon_?"

"This was the farthest location from Princeton-Plainsboro in the continental United States that had a favorable position in hospital administration," Cuddy said, eyes closed, feet up as she tried to steal a nap.

They sat on opposite sides of the plane, facing each other. House stretched out on the sofa on one side and Cuddy in a chair on the other. They didn't say anything for most of the trip. House tried to sleep, too. The private jet was nicer than most of the places he'd ever lived or stayed, and it was clear that whoever owned this jet had plenty of money. The seats were comfortably designed, but he couldn't quite settle in. His leg throbbed and his chest ached and even though he had won and he was on a plane, it was hard to consider it a victory since they were headed to Wilson's funeral.

The pilot announced when they were nearing their destination. Cuddy woke and peeked through the window, blinking at the bright light of the sun that shone outside of the plane. He watched as she tried to work the kinks out of her neck. "What did you have to trade for this flight?" he asked without accusation or suggestion.

"A summer internship in our orthopedics department for the owner's son," Cuddy answered.

"A guy with this much money couldn't _buy_ his son an internship?"

"The owner is a surgeon at another local hospital. He couldn't easily offer a _donation _to a different hospital without raising suspicions, and if his son is offered an internship at his hospital, it's just going to look like nepotism. Although it sounds like that was their fallback plan. Apparently the kid applied at my hospital and was rejected."

"And now another rich brat can weasel his way into medicine with his daddy's money?"

"It's an unpaid summer internship for an undergrad, not a permanent staff position. If he wants to actually finish med school, he's got a long way to go. I was out of options. We're almost there. Are you _really_ going to complain about my methods when the result was exactly what you were looking for?"

He shook his head, "Nope."

As the tiny plane began its bumpy descent, House was fully aware that interesting questions surrounded him, but as much as he understood that, he still didn't care enough to pursue them. Normally, questions such as these would thunder in his mind, obscuring more mundane or practical concerns as they demanded answers. Now his questions barely whispered in the distance, existing more as faint suggestions for lines of inquiry rather than mysteries begging to be solved. Although he was cognizant of all of these things, he wasn't sure if he'd ever return to his own "normal," or even if he really cared whether or not he did.

A car awaited them at the airport, and drove them nearly an hour until they arrived at the cemetery. They made it just as everyone was gathering. "How do you want to do this?" she asked as they looked at the crowd of mourners who'd surrounded the grave. "We probably don't want to get too close or—"

"Up there," House said as he pointed the driver toward a nearby hill.

House got out of the car without his cane, sitting on the ground right beside the vehicle so they were a little more difficult to see. He knew he wouldn't be as recognizable without his defining accessory as part of his silhouette. He wasn't close enough to hear the words of the presiding rabbi, but whatever words were spoken didn't really matter to House. He wasn't interested in whatever was being said to soothe those who wept. He simply needed to be there. In truth, he didn't really care if he were recognized and subsequently imprisoned, but he knew how much Wilson did not want that to happen, so he kept his distance.

Cuddy joined him, sitting on the chilly ground next to him as they watched. The ceremony itself didn't really impact him. He didn't need a pine box or a hole in the ground to tell him that Wilson was gone. This wasn't about closure or casting the light of reality on denial. If anything, he was all too well aware of everything that was going on. He recognized one of Wilson's brothers. He could tell which one was Wilson's mother by her position and body language. Most of the people around the grave didn't even _really_ know Wilson, at least not as well as House did. If anything, it made the entire concept of a ceremony like this one seem more ridiculous and unnecessary, a pretense. He was relatively certain that he saw Chase and Foreman standing in the crowd. He saw Cameron there, too, although she didn't stand with the other two. He probably knew some of the other attendees from his time at Princeton-Plainsboro, but they didn't matter.

The whole ceremony was shorter than he'd expected, and the crowd thinned as people began to file away from the site. Chase and Foreman left together, and just before getting in Foreman's car, Chase looked up toward the spot at the top of the hill, and House was almost certain Chase nodded at them.

"Was that—?" Cuddy started.

"Yup," House interrupted.

"Is he going to say anything?"

"I doubt it. I left him a love note before I ran off. He likely already knew I was still hanging around. And, if he knew that, he also knew I'd be here."

"Do you think anyone else saw you?"

"I don't think anyone else was really looking. Maybe Foreman, but he's probably still too busy trying to be the next Cuddy."

They watched as the rest of the mourners left the site, a few lingering for a while after the ceremony was over. Cuddy had shared the only alcohol she'd brought hours earlier when she'd toasted Wilson's plane, but House produced a bottle that he shared. She only took a few sips, determined to remain sober enough to stop him from making any huge mistakes borne of grief.

When only a pair of funeral workers remained to finish the details of Wilson's burial, House asked, "Ready?"

"Are we leaving?" she replied.

"Not yet," he answered, getting back in the car and instructing the driver to take them closer to the gravesite.

Once they were close, Cuddy got out alone and asked the workers if they could have a few moments. The workers didn't leave their charge, but they stepped back to allow another pair of mourners their privacy. She asked House, "Do you want to do this alone?"

He could feel his head beginning to nod, but he said, clearly, "No."

They went together, House unsteadily making his way toward the place where all that was left of Wilson was destined to rot away. As they stood by the graveside, House reached into his coat pocket and produced a small zip top bag. He opened it, stuck his hand in and grabbed as much of the contents as he could, throwing his own handful of dirt on top of the site. "You brought your own?" Cuddy asked, her tone obviously curious.

House didn't answer, his head dropping a bit as he thought. She stepped closer, her arm touching his. He finally sighed and said, "It was good while it lasted, Wilson. We had one hell of a run."

* * *

A few hours later they were back on a jet to the west coast. She wanted to get back home to Rachel as soon as possible, and there wasn't any reason for them to stay any longer. House had done what he'd needed to do. Shortly after takeoff, Cuddy got up to retrieve a bottle of water from the fridge. As she walked back to her seat, House grabbed her wrist when she came close enough. She looked down first at her arm to confirm that it actually had been House who'd snagged it, then she looked at his face to try to figure out why.

Her first instinct was to believe that his fire had come back, and he was ready for the argument she'd been waiting for. Oddly enough, she would have taken that as a good sign, because seeing him without his "fight" was quite disconcerting. But she didn't find a man waiting to pry into her thoughts or push her buttons. House had a way of looking like the saddest person in the world without actually doing anything. There weren't any sniffles or sobs, just a particularly lost expression and eyes that were windows into utter despair and loneliness. If she had to choose one word to describe him in that moment, it would have been lonely.

House had often been _alone_, and that had never seemed to bother him much. But it was clear that there was a very big difference between the words "alone" and "lonely," and he seemed lonelier than he'd ever seemed before.

He tugged only slightly on her wrist, not enough to truly move her but enough to suggest that she sit. She took a spot on the sofa next to him, and waited. As soon as she sat, he let go of her wrist, but she kept her hand close to him. "You weren't comfortable sleeping in the chair," he observed.

"It was fine," she answered.

"That's not true," he replied, handing her a throw pillow and pointing to the other end of the sofa.

She opened her mouth to say _something, _pausing before asking him how he felt or if he would be okay. She wanted to say anything to let him know it was okay for him to talk to her, and that she was there for him, or some collection of words that could make a difference, but the words all sounded insufficient or clichéd as they flowed through her mind. She decided that instead of _telling_ him she was there for him, she'd simply continue to _be_ there.

Taking the pillow, she tossed it at the other end of the sofa, kicked off her shoes and curled up on her side. She hadn't anticipated falling asleep as easily as she did. She woke when the plane roughly shook her from sleep.

When she looked at House, he was still at the other end of the sofa. His head was leaning back and he was staring at the ceiling. She wondered if he'd slept at all. He turned his head and said, "Just turbulence."

Before she lay back down, she saw his hand next to the back of her calf just above her ankle, the backs of his knuckles just barely touching her skin. His arm was resting against the same cushion, so the touch looked incidental, but she knew House well enough to know that such contact would never be incidental. Before he could move away, she asked, "You have enough room?"

He bobbed his head and replied, "You?"

She sunk down into the pillow and closed her eyes as she answered, "I'm good."

When she was nearly asleep he said, "I needed to be there today."

"I know."

"You got me there."

Opening her eyes, she looked over her shoulder at him and answered, "It was important."

"Now you're stuck with the spoiled rotten summer intern?"

She closed her eyes again and smiled, "Not me. Kirby. She's the head of orthopedics."

"But it's your hospital, and I know how you feel about your hospitals."

"It doesn't mean what it used to mean," she said as she yawned. "This place is huge. I don't have time to worry about the small stuff."

"You don't love it?"

"The hospital? No. I like it. My heart's just not in it like it was at Princeton. You were right, you know. Princeton was my baby. Portland is more…," she stared at the ceiling and she thought for a moment. "Portland is the kid down the street that you have to babysit once in a while."

House nodded and added, "You want to make sure the kid is fed and gets to bed on time. You don't want to kill it while you're in charge or do anything to ruin your reputation as a kick-ass childcare provider. But…in the end, you don't melt at the sight of a card it made on its own, gush over every minor success or spend sleepless nights worrying about its future."

She breathed a subtle laugh as she started to fall back to sleep, "You always had a way with metaphor."


	6. Part VI: Keep Coming Back

_A/N-The chapter title is part of a "12-stepper" slogan that I felt like playing with a little. Thanks to all who are still reading along. _

* * *

**Part VI: Keep Coming Back  
**

After they returned from the funeral, a taxi drove them to House's apartment. He got out and she followed, but he said, "I just need time."

"Want me to come in for a while?" she offered, already looking at the door.

"Go see Rachel."

"You really want me to leave?"

"Coming over tomorrow?"

She nodded quickly, looking relieved that he was doing the inviting. "Sure," she replied as she leaned closer, extending an arm and waiting for him to protest. When he didn't, she gave him a one armed hug. He accepted it, even leaned his chin toward her shoulder a bit.

She looked out the car window at him as she drove away. He returned to the apartment with purpose, immediately unlocking the door, taking a stepladder from the hall closet and going straight to his bedroom. He'd had enough of this pain.

He set up the stepladder and climbed up to the crawlspace. He'd _earned_ this. He deserved a reprieve from this constant sadness. Reaching around in the crawlspace, he found his small leather bag and stepped down as carefully as he could. He opened the bag, removing the morphine he'd stashed long ago.

The anticipation was almost unbearable. Finally, if only temporarily, he was going to feel no pain. He carefully measured out a dose. He knew the risks of overdose when relapsing, and he had every intention of being alive when Cuddy returned the next morning. He didn't want to confirm her suspicions that he'd do something irreparable.

He opened a clean, disposable syringe, and carefully prepped his arm. He'd thought of everything when he'd packed this bag. He had enough vials and supplies in his kit to be happily drugged for at least a few days, but all he really needed for the time being was a few hours of peace. Packing this disaster relief kit had made him feel more prepared back when he was watching Wilson steadily wither away. It had given him some control over the pain as he stayed mostly sober to take care of his friend. All of the preparations had been worth it.

Sitting back against the pillows, he injected the morphine and waited for that _feeling_. He'd craved this. He'd thought about it. He'd even dreamed about it. And he felt the typical chill and numbing crawl in his vein that felt so good it was practically erotic, and he waited for the pain to cease.

The amazing thing about morphine was how quickly and effectively it could relieve pain, much more quickly than Vicodin. He was counting on that. His leg felt a little better almost immediately. He noticed that first since the pain had been agonizing for weeks, and he waited for the rest of the pain to dull. He closed his eyes, relaxed his body, felt the easy limpness that came with the dose.

It eased nearly every ache in his body except for the one he truly wanted to relieve. When he realized his current dosage wasn't sufficient for his purposes, he added more to a syringe, still carefully trying not to overdose but so ready for some of this suffering to end that he lacked patience. After the second dose, he looked around the room as he lay there and saw a pile of clothes on the dresser. He'd folded them the night before Wilson had died. His shirts were in one pile, Wilson's in another. House had planned on taking them to Wilson's room in the morning to avoid waking him.

He was so fucking high. House actually laughed as additional heavy numbness filled his limbs, dulled the ache in his leg about as much as possible and clouded his brain, bringing him near unconsciousness, but he still felt every bit of the loss he'd suffered. The laugh was full of anger, frustration and disappointment. He sat up, taking the glass vial and uncoordinatedly throwing it at the wall behind the clothes. Glass shattered and fell on the clean laundry and scattered across the floor.

Then he lay there motionlessly, hoping the morphine would somehow eventually numb everything he needed it to numb. If he it couldn't heal the ache, at least he'd sleep. Even in his drug induced sleep, he still dreamt of the things he'd been trying to escape. When he woke hours later without even the benefit of physical numbness, he wondered why he'd even bothered relapsing.

Morning came early, and Cuddy was there before work. House scrambled out of bed as quickly as he could and locked his bedroom door. "You alright back there?" she called down the hall.

"Be out in a minute," he shouted back.

He found a sweatshirt that he threw on to cover the recent needle marks on his arm and pulled on his pajama pants so everything would look as normal as possible. Hurrying to the dresser, he shoved the largest pieces of the broken bottle, especially the ones with pieces of the label attached, under the clean laundry.

He grabbed his cane and went out to see her before she became more suspicious. His limbs still felt heavy, and he was residually groggy, so the walk down the hall seemed to take forever. She was standing in the kitchen, making coffee, and started talking before she saw him. "You don't mind if I steal a cup of coffee, do you?"

"Technically this is still your place," he responded.

"Technically it's the hospi…," she started until she turned around. She saw him, and paused for a moment as her eyes narrowed with worry. Hesitantly, she kept talking, "I…brought you a donut."

"You don't have to feed me. We have stuff here," he answered, realizing he'd said 'we' like Wilson was still living there with him.

"I guess it makes me feel better. I'm not exactly sure what to do to help you," she frankly replied. Then she pointed and asked, "What happened to your foot?"

When he looked at the floor, he saw a few spots of blood like a dotted trail behind him. He must have cut his foot on the remnants of that damn bottle. "I broke a glass. Must have stepped on a piece," he said before he went to the bathroom to remove the glass and wash the cut.

He could see the worry and suspicion on her face when he returned. If she had been trying to hide it, she couldn't have failed more miserably. She leaned against the kitchen counter and said, "I think I need a day off."

"You took the day off yesterday. And the day before."

"I could hang out here. We could—"

"Go to work. We'll go through Wilson's stuff later."

"Okay," she said. "Do you want to have lunch today?"

"What like…go out?"

"I can bring something here, come over at the same times I have been."

He nodded, watching curiously as she seemed to be carrying on an internal argument. She grabbed her things and said, "I'll see you at lunch then."

She left while he poured coffee. He heard the door open and close and thought he was alone until he found her standing behind him again. "I can _feel _how badly you hurt right now. It radiates off of you. But I have one request," she somberly stated.

"What?"

"If you need help, you need to tell me. Let me at least _try_. I know it doesn't feel possible, and the pain might never really go away, but it will lessen if you give it time. Don't…," she paused, pushing down an emotional reaction before she could continue. "Don't make me bury both of you in the same month. I just want to know if you'll be here when I come back because I'm going to keep coming back here. And when I do, I want to find you warm and breathing, with a steady, strong pulse and the ability to wake up."

He finally nodded, his expression so perplexed that it would have been funny in any other circumstance. "See you at lunch," he finally replied.

She left again, this time going to her car. He watched her from the window. He saw her grab a tissue from a box stashed in the car, and he wondered just how much she knew. It felt like she had been looking right through him.

When she returned at lunch, she had enough food for four people. Still talking on her phone, she started removing containers from bags as House watched her. When she hung up, she said, "You look slightly less worn over than this morning."

He picked through the food, finding a container he wanted. "What was that about?" he asked.

"The food?"

"The call."

"Oh. Nothing exciting. Hospital vendor contract negotiations."

He kept staring, like he wanted to hear more, and gestured with his fork for her to continue.

"You want to know about a contract dispute?" she asked, her voice getting higher at the end of the question. He nodded and she added, "Is this some kind of weird joke?"

He shook his head, sat down in the seat next to her at the table, and continued to wait, so she started telling him about it.

When that was done, she told him about a particularly vicious rivalry for one of the Department Chair positions, and then about the damage that was done when one of her doctor's email accounts was hacked and used for nefarious purposes. "There was a huge Federal investigation," she explained as she shook her head. He continued to listen, his focus more entirely on her than what little food he consumed.

She checked on him again after work, keeping the same schedule she'd had for Wilson, so House asked if she had any good hospital gossip. Initially she didn't want to answer, but since she wanted to keep him engaged, she finally relented. He seemed pretty surprised at just how much gossip she knew. Before she left that evening, she said, "Come over. You can wait until after Rachel goes to sleep if you want. We can have a glass of wine, play a game, you can snoop around a little, or any combination of the above. Your choice."

"Your place?" he asked.

"Yea," she answered, jotting her address down on the edge of a newspaper. "In case you don't already know where I live. I'll be home. Rachel goes to bed by eight-thirty."

* * *

He didn't show up at her place. She waited until shortly after midnight to make sure he hadn't changed his mind. The next few days were much of the same. She'd visit and he'd ask about work or gossip or even Rachel. He seldom said much of anything, but he listened intently to everything that she chose to tell him. And every single evening she invited him to visit her at home. Every single evening she left the front light on. Every single evening she waited for him until shortly after midnight and then gave up and went to bed.

They were eating lunch over a week after they'd started this ritual. She'd just finished telling him about a person on her staff whose ineptitude drove Cuddy to the brink of insanity. She took a sip of her drink and then asked, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Every day you listen to me talk about this stuff like it's actually interesting to you. You used to hate when I'd tell you about my work day. Your eyes would glaze over. My work is not interesting to you."

He drummed his fingers on his glass and replied, "The work of a hospital administrator is not all that interesting to me. But _you_ are."

She stared at her plate of food while she took in his words. After a few seconds, she asked, "If I really am interesting to you, why have you completely ignored my daily invitations to come over?"

"I don't feel like socializing."

"How is it any different than what we're doing here? You're stuck here by yourself a lot. I mean, I visit, but it's not the same. There's more to life than sitting here, day after day, waiting for me to come talk about things you're not even interested in. I know this is tough. I don't expect you to act like everything's fine, because it's not. But your world is so much bigger than this apartment."

He started to argue, "Cuddy—"

She interrupted, "All that I'm asking…is that you think of getting out a little. It's my place, nothing fancy. You can unstraighten all of my picture frames and criticize my décor. You don't even have to wear shoes," she added, simultaneously trying to lighten the mood and sweeten the offer.

"Do I have to wear pants?" he joked.

She laughed a bit too loudly, sort of eager to hear him finally saying something that sounded so _him_. After the momentary levity, his mood immediately dropped again. "Just think about it, okay?" she asked. "That's all I'm asking. If you aren't comfortable hanging out at my place, we can go out. Anywhere you want to go. It doesn't have to be today…but soon."

Still he didn't visit her at home or agree to go anywhere else with her either. She did begin to find evidence that he'd left the apartment for the things he'd needed. She found a few shopping bags or new purchases, and his car was occasionally in a slightly different spot.

Since it seemed they were locked into their current situation, she started asking him questions, too. The questions weren't about death or about how he felt in the wake of the loss of Wilson, but they were often personal questions. Sometimes she'd ask him about cases he'd had. House wouldn't talk extensively about these things, but gradually he went from one or two word answers to longer explanations. At least there were glimmers of House's humor on occasion, and his mood seemed to be making modest but steady improvements.

After nearly three weeks of their daily routine, Cuddy left work a little early one afternoon. When she arrived at the apartment, she heard water splashing in the tub and realized that his leg must have really been bothering him and he probably hadn't expected her so early.

Since she had some time, Cuddy walked to Wilson's doorway and looked around his room. They had yet to go through his things, but he didn't have much there. She guessed that most of Wilson's personal belongings were probably in a storage unit or an apartment somewhere. His phone caught her eye, though, sitting on the windowsill next to his bed. She stepped carefully across the carpet like she was treading on hallowed ground to retrieve the phone.

Since the battery was dead, she went to the living room and found Wilson's charger in the wall near his chair. So she plugged in the phone. While it charged, she grabbed some water from the fridge and wasted some time looking through her emails until she saw the display blink, indicating that his phone had enough battery to power on. Sitting against the wall next to the outlet, she turned on the phone.

She saw the lasts texts from Wilson, his phone was exactly as it had been the morning he had died.

Her intention wasn't to snoop through his texts or search his recent calls, she just hoped to find a picture of him. In recent days, she'd been having difficulties remembering what he'd looked like before his illness. Her mind seemed to mostly recall the way he looked after he'd died or in the days just before his death, and she wanted something that would remind her of a better time and a healthier Wilson.

When she opened his pictures, she found he'd taken hundreds. She started flipping through them, seeing a few glimpses of his roadtrip with House. A more recent picture showed the two bikes that they'd had to sell when Wilson became too ill to ride and they needed a car. There were pictures of mountains, deserts, cityscapes, and strange or humorous sightings they'd had along the way. There were a few people Cuddy didn't recognize at all. House was in some of the pictures. He wasn't necessarily the subject of them. Usually Cuddy could see him right on the edge of the shot, standing in the periphery of whatever Wilson had been committing to digital memory.

After paging through many pictures, she finally found one of Wilson. It appeared that someone, probably House, had taken the camera from him, because Wilson was holding out his hand, beckoning for the return of his phone. She laughed just a little when she saw the expression of pure irritation on Wilson's face that House had caused, and she wanted to know the whole story the photo had to tell. She stared at the image for a long time. It was one of the older ones on the phone. Wilson looked a little slim, but not at all as sickly as he'd looked by the time she'd met him again. It felt like seeing the Wilson she'd known.

The picture made her grin for just a moment as some of the older memories started to come back, first just one or two, and then all at once. She kept going through, seeing those glimpses of the life House had shared with Wilson after she'd gone. The thoughts that returned filled her with a warmth for the past that she forgotten, and, at the same time, a greater sense of all that had been lost.

* * *

House soaked as he heard the sounds of Cuddy creeping around the apartment. It had happened a few times before, when he'd be waking or soaking, and he kind of liked it. He liked the noise of her, whether talking, making coffee, or even the sounds she made when she thought she wasn't making any sounds as she tried not to disturb his slumber. She had been tireless in her support and unrelenting in her presence, and that dogged persistence was both something he understood and appreciated. He mattered enough to occupy a significant, although strange, space in her life.

After he finally got out of the tub, he found the little mini-safe that was designed to look like a book on the shelf in his room. Opening it, he looked at the few remaining tablets of tramadol that he had left and decided to save them for a day when his leg felt much worse. He was going to have to find a way to get more if he intended to stay off Vicodin and the other opioids that were always incredibly alluring.

He found her sitting on the floor in the living room next to the sliding glass doors, staring at a phone. He consciously realized for the first time that she'd let her hair grow longer and had stopped trying to straighten it. He started to wonder just how out of it he had been since he'd neglected to notice something so obvious. He usually noticed _everything_. "Your hair looks better like this," he said before she even noticed he was there.

She was startled, putting the phone on the floor by her side, and he could clearly tell she was wiping tears from her face, so he asked, "Is that a sensitive subject?"

"No," she replied as she pushed the phone along the carpet behind her back.

He immediately noticed her actions, wondering what other things he'd been missing as of late if she thought he wouldn't notice that. He approached, carefully bracing his palm on the coffee table as he dropped down onto the floor next to her. He held out his hand, palm up, and waited. "Gimme," he demanded.

She picked up the phone and dropped it in his hand and said, "It's just Wilson's phone."

He asked, calmly, "If it's just a phone, why did it upset you?"

Swiping away a few more tears, she replied, "I was looking at some pictures." She watched as he turned on the phone and saw what she had been looking at. He began with the most recent picture, and started scrolling through as she asked, "Did you really go all of those places?"

He nodded, looking through them quietly until she started asking questions. Initially with great hesitation he answered her, but he started to tell a few of the stories that went with them. As he talked, he felt moments where he really started to remember these things with more fondness. They sat on the floor for over an hour as he talked a little more openly about the things he and Wilson had done, and she just listened. She was sitting right next to him, her arm sometimes pressing against his and her hair brushing his shoulder since they were that close. She was still persistently present.

He felt like he was noticing more things little by little. The world was sort of tickling his senses again, and as much as he still noticed his feelings of loss, not _every_ feeling he noticed was devastating. There was something pleasant about remembering exactly how good things had been and how much fun he and Wilson had found.

They continued through, and since the pictures were ordered from the most recent to the oldest, it was as if they were traveling back through time. And then, with one flip of his thumb, they landed on a picture that made them both freeze. The picture had been taken at Cuddy's place in New Jersey. She and House were seated at the dining room table next to each other. Their heads were turned toward each other as they leaned close, and it looked like Cuddy had been talking. House had a subtle smile playing on the corner of his mouth and her fingers were tugging the collar of his shirt.

It gave them a glimpse of what Wilson had seen between them. They could see the tension and desire that had often made Wilson squirm, but that picture also spoke to a depth of feeling that was easily dismissed after their fallout. Finally, intentionally concentrating on his thumb and ordering it to move, he flipped to the next picture. It had obviously been taken the same night. It was hard to see his own face, but he could see Cuddy's. She was clearly laughing, as every feature on her face confirmed. House tried to remember what he'd said to make her react that way.

In an attempt to break the awkwardness in the room, Cuddy said, fondly, "Leave it to Wilson to take pictures during the forty-three seconds we were happy."

House replied, "If we could have stayed that way, he would have been the happiest, smuggest cupid of all time."

"If we could have stayed that way, he wouldn't have been the only happy one," she absently answered, like her words were inconsequential.

The words impacted him, though. He turned and asked, "You wish we could have stayed that way?"

She took the phone from his hand and flipped back to the pictures, "Like this? Yea. We just weren't like this much. It's weird, isn't it? When this picture was taken, all three of us still had so much potential. Wilson thought he had a whole life in front of him, we could have been something until…we clearly couldn't. It makes me think of what could have been. But life is so finite and the future is uncertain, no matter how much you plan and prepare. I don't think any of us imagined things would happen as they did."

"Why are you here?" he asked, bluntly.

Cuddy paused before she answered, "Because this is where I need to be."

"But, as you just so astutely mentioned, we squandered our relationship potential. And yet, you're here. You're here every day. With me. We're deliberately avoiding the stampeding herd of elephants in the room."

"It's not the right time."

"Sounds like denial."

"It isn't. Far from it."

"Just because you _say _it isn't denial doesn't make it so."

"I know that. It's not denial because I am here with full acknowledgment of the ugliness of our history. I am not forgetting or ignoring it. You just lost Wilson. I'm giving you time to deal with that before you start to deal with me. _If _you want to deal with me."

"So why are you here?"

"I have things in my life I wish I would have handled differently, so I'm trying to _do_ different things now. I don't want history to blindly repeat itself while I'm along for the ride. I don't want to create any more ugliness or animosity between us. I'm hoping that you don't either. It doesn't feel like you do. Things between us are different. Maybe we've learned something or grown. Maybe we're so damaged that we've had to evolve to deal with life. I don't know. No matter what, this is where I feel I need to be and you haven't tried to stop me. So here I am."

He was processing her words as quickly as he could while a million thoughts were swirling in his head. He finally said, "That explains _what_ you're doing here. But I don't think it really explains _why_. You have to have some motivation to choose this particular course of action. You could avoid creating more ugliness and animosity by simply avoiding me altogether. But by spending this much time with me, you're actually increasing the chances that something could go wrong. Instead of the safer, more predictable route, you come here two or three times a day. You bring me food. You confide in me. You invite me to your place. Which is still sort of a surprise. So why?"

"I can't give you answers that I don't have."

"Except I think you do have them," he replied as he watched her look away. Whether it was because she was trying to hide the answers from him or herself or she simply wasn't ready to think about the question, he wasn't sure. He continued, "Although either way, I'm not sure where I'd be without you. You took care of Wilson and traded that internship for me. You show up every day, and keep asking if I want to come over…and even though I _never_ show up, you keep asking. And you did all of that for someone you should despise."

"So maybe the why doesn't matter."

"The why always matters."

"I keep inviting you because I really hope some night you're gonna show up. Since you seem to be convinced there must be a hidden plan here, you probably won't believe what I'm going to tell you, but I'm glad you didn't push me away. I'm sure it hasn't been easy to have me around."

He looked at her as if she were crazy. Something had been built between them in the previous weeks that he had been too disconnected to notice. An alliance that had begun because of mutual concern for a friend grew stronger through shared sorrow, and deepened in the early stages of healing. All of this hadn't erased the pain, but they were not alone as they faced it.

He had been silent for several minutes. When she didn't seem to know what to say, she cleared her throat and offered, "I can copy the pictures off of his phone and give them to you."

"Thank you."

"It's no big deal. I'll just transfer them to my computer and—"

"I don't mean for the pictures," he interrupted.

He remembered then how close they were as she nodded, acknowledging the truth of his thanks. Strangely she'd never seemed so unguarded. He couldn't remember a time while they were together when she didn't at least have some sort of cautious resistance, but now, when he thought she had the most reason to keep a protective separation, she was open.

He moved closer subtly, but they were already so close that even that small action made a significant change. Her eyes widened with a question and her hand raised, but instead of blocking him, she touched his face, her fingers resting just below his ear. She tilted her head and lifted her chin but she didn't close the remaining gap. Her fingers gently pulled him forward, more suggesting than forcing, but he didn't resist.

When the kiss first began, it could almost have been mistaken for an innocent exchange. Their lips barely met for those first few seconds, and then she tilted her head just a little more and sat just a little closer and traced her tongue between his lips, and whatever purity may have been possible between them whisked away. He tried to pull her into his lap, but she was already moving there of her own free will.

It seemed they wanted the same thing, at the same time, and he soaked up the feeling of such unguarded, unreserved contact. He fleetingly wondered if he should end this, but she'd done so much for him, explaining in no uncertain terms, not with words but with actions, how she felt about him. Actions like those were more telling than the most carefully worded declarations.

He felt her knees on either side of him and her arms as she wrapped them around his neck. He grabbed onto the fabric of her skirt with one hand and his other hand pressed against the small of her back, bringing their bodies closer together. He absorbed the feeling of the warmth of her body against him. The hand that had held her skirt moved under it and started an ascent along her outer thigh until both hands found her ass. "Thanks for not playing it safe and writing me off," he somewhat breathlessly said.

"I couldn't," she replied.

Her eyes closed as his hand slipped around her body and he started to push her panties off to the side. The pad of his finger moved along her slit, scarcely touching her until he curved his finger against her and started to slip his finger through her folds with more decisive contact. Her head lulled as he continued to stroke her, feeling the slickness that built with each touch. She stood for just a second and slid her panties down her legs so they'd be out of the way, but she didn't even bother removing her skirt before she returned to her spot on his lap. Her fingers moved up his neck and brought his face closer, her lips brushing his as she moved past them. As she buried her face against his neck, he shuddered and pressed his cheek against her forehead.

Even through the almost overpowering sensations of her breath against his skin, her lips as she whispered, and the feeling of her heat on his finger, he knew the whys surrounding her presence weren't the only unexplored whys. Why had he let her so close? Why did he stay when it would have been safer to leave before she started to get under his skin? It felt like she was reaching something within him that he thought was completely withered and atrophied, and she was breathing new life into it. Her grasp wound through his entire mind and body. He knew the more she curled through every thought, every breath and every cell of his being, the more inextricable she would become.

But his answer to all of these whys was much the same as hers: he needed to be there. He needed this. He needed _her. _Since Wilson had died, House felt the constant need for one more moment, one more touch, one more day without her absence. Maybe she was an addiction. Or maybe she was something else entirely.

His interest in the whys was quickly fading as they continued. Her touch was affectionate. He could _feel_ that she wanted to be close to him, but the affection didn't make her any less alluring. This encounter was full of desire and longing in _every_ way. She shifted in his lap, her hips moving in time with his touch. His eyes closed as he felt her slipping against his finger, the delicate weight of her in his lap and the scratch of one nail against his neck. One last thought persisted in his brain. He wanted her to know that she could trust him like this. He didn't want to have this conversation later when things were more heated or for her to have lingering worries afterward if they avoided the conversation, so he said, "I'm negative. As in disease-free."

He waited for her response, because he truly wasn't sure if she would simply take his word for it. She stopped moving for a moment, and her brow furrowed as she tried to shift her thoughts from sex to his words until the meaning dawned on her. She replied, "Me too."

"You trust me?"

"Yea."

"You probably shouldn't trust anyone who says that."

"I don't trust _anyone _who says that. I trust you. If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't even be here. Now," she said as he thought, "can we continue?"

He bobbed his head, watching interestedly while she covered both of his hands with hers, the one against her sex and the one at her back, and she pressed them against her body. As he moved his finger into her again, his palm pushed against her clit and she gasped, "Thank _god_."

She let go of his hands as she softly began to brush his erection through his pajama pants, and he could feel the way she sought his reaction to her. His response was to impatiently remove her hand, and create just enough distance between them to shove his pants and boxers out of the way before he brought her close again. He had no interest in feigning disinterest. He took her hand, covering it with his own, and placing it on his cock. He helped her curl her fingers around him, and again he closed his eyes and simply reveled in her touch. Her fingers were warm and her grip firm, but her skin was so silky against him as her hand began to move without his direction.

He looked into her eyes and saw that she wasn't smug about the way the tension in his face melted from her touch and pleasure numbed his brain, but she did seem pleased that they were still so _attracted_. Maybe she'd thought they'd moved beyond that stage, but that was proving to be an unfounded concept since they were both going crazy for a couple of handjobs on the floor. His memories of her like this were emerging, flashing through his mind like a million tiny sensations as he started to remember how much he'd craved her. He'd tried so hard to forget that. What had begun like prickles of feeling grew hotter and more pervasive, spreading through his mind and across his skin like a blazing summer sun that had actually managed to shine _through _him.

He grabbed two fistfuls of fabric from her skirt and yanked her forward on his lap. His hands slipped around her, under her skirt, grabbing her ass and pulling her closer while he lifted against her. Her fingers had felt amazing, but nothing compared to the feeling of her sex intimately brushing against his. He wasn't even inside her yet and he could feel the very pulse of her.

She was moving so erotically, tempting him as she undulated over him and watching his need build and begin to completely overwhelm conscious thought. When she slid along his shaft one more time, she lifted just a little bit more, tilting her hips toward him and allowing him into her body.

He hadn't anticipated that, not just yet, so he was unprepared, clenching his jaw and groaning at the sudden tight grip of her core as he closed his eyes and basked in the sudden, heavy wave of sensation. She took him slowly, allowing him just a bit deeper with each downward thrust. She didn't slow for long, though. After the things that had happened between them in the past, he had expected her to require some convincing. She wasn't at all passive or timid, taking the reins without inhibition. She was choosing this, choosing _him _rather than reluctantly accepting.

He leaned back, perfectly happy to let her take the lead for the time being. Although watching didn't do anything to ease his heightened level of excitement. Then she started to talk. She was whispering his name, allowing the sounds of her pleasure to be heard. He'd always loved listening to her like that.

"You feel so good," she moaned.

"You too," he barely managed to reply.

"And you're so—"

"Shh," he said, sitting up toward her and shaking his head.

"I thought you liked—"

"I do," he said, nodding. "Too much."

He wasn't about to tell her that he didn't want their first time in years to be a disappointment or that it felt like an _eternity_ since the last time he'd come or that she felt almost too good to handle. He guessed she probably knew at least some of those things since he really wasn't hiding it well. As much as he was enjoying this, he felt really out of practice touching and being touched by someone who really mattered to him.

He didn't want to think of anything else, not when it had been so long since they'd been together like this. This was where he wanted to be, and who he wanted to be with. So he put his right hand between them and started swirling his thumb against her clit as he wrapped his left arm around her ass to hold her still. He was still completely nestled inside her as he touched her. "Don't move. Let me get you caught up," he whispered, kissing her chin and moving down the center of her chest.

His hands were occupied, so he simply looked at her and then at the buttons on her shirt, and thankfully she offered a hand. Her fingers flicked each of the buttons on her shirt open, fumbling slightly over the task as she was distracted by all of the other feelings he was producing. Once the shirt slipped off her shoulders, he moved his face between her breasts, kissing the strips of exposed skin not covered by her bra. He didn't even bother waiting for her to take it off, skimming his teeth over lace and each jutting nipple. She was still trying to remove the bra, attempting to stay on task so nothing would stand in his way.

She started to swivel her hips and he tightened his arm around to her to try to minimize her movement because he was fighting to wait for her. His face was still buried between her breasts, his thumb still rolling her clit and his cock still buried deep within her, and then he felt her begin to tighten all around him, and she moved with such strength that he couldn't really keep her still any longer.

Her fingernails dug into his shoulder as her pleasure mounted. When she noticed that she was digging into him, she mumbled an apology and let go. He stopped holding her still against him, took her hand, and brought it back to his shoulder. He wanted to feel every insuppressible reaction of her body, every spasm, every twitch, every dig of a fingernail.

She was able to move unencumbered since he was no longer holding her still, so she started to, lifting and dropping into his lap as he plunged into her. He could see and feel and hear just how close she was. He rolled her under him, scarcely missing a beat in their rhythm as they kept fucking. One of her legs was wrapped around his back, holding onto him. The other leg curled around his, her toes pressing into the back of his calf as she tried to get enough leverage to meet every single one of his thrusts.

She'd been gasping and moaning into his ear, and then she became suddenly quiet. Her head flew back, every muscle in her body from her neck to her toes tensed and the noises actually _stopped_ while she held her breath and her orgasm crested. He was right there with her, as his body finally couldn't resist the need to be swept away into bliss with her. He moved slowly in and out of her a few more times while he was still hard enough to do so, just to feel her body clinging to his and watch her face as he wrung a few more pleasurable sensations from her before it was all over.

He moved down a little to take some of his weight off her, turning his face and resting it against her chest. Her legs stayed wrapped loosely around him. They openly and without reservation held each other right there in the middle of the floor. Neither bothered to pretend they wanted to go or to make it look like they'd had a meaningless hookup. Neither made any mention of the future or feelings either. As her fingers lazily ran through his hair and gently touched his shoulder, he felt such relief that she didn't hurry away or try to put distance between them. His hand smoothed along her side from her hip and up over her ribs, expressing affection he wasn't prepared to voice. At least for the moment, he was perfectly at ease in her embrace.

After a while, they heard her phone chirping in the distance. She ignored it until she remembered what the sound meant. He rolled to one side and let her up once he realized she needed to attend to it.

House watched as she searched for her phone and turned off the alarm. She was still wearing her skirt, since they never really managed to remove it, but it was hanging loosely around her hips and she had to hold it up to keep it from falling. She was still shirtless and kind of scattered, looking a little embarrassed as his eyes honed in on her. He searched her for any signs of regret, but didn't find any.

Her button was missing, so she went to her purse and took out a pin and rigged it so the skirt wouldn't fall down. When she looked at House again, she found her bra dangling from his fingers, waiting for her to retrieve it. She smiled as she came closer, trying to straighten her wrinkled skirt. "The nanny has an evening class tonight, or I'd stay a little longer. It's the only night of the week she really needs me to be home." Cuddy kissed him quickly before she took the bra. "I'd rather stay," she said.

"You don't have to explain."

"No," she almost whined, "don't do that. I do want to stay. This isn't an excuse."

"I know."

"Come over. Now. Or tonight. Whenever," she said as she finished buttoning her blouse.

"I'll be fine. Stop worrying."

She knelt on the floor next to him and asked, "Are you okay with all of this?"

"Are you?" he asked after nodding.

"Yes."

"But it doesn't fix anything," he said, anticipating what he thought she was about to say.

"It doesn't. But I told you that I don't want us to create any more ugliness. And what just happened…was very far from ugly. So I'm okay if you are."

She leaned down to offer a quick kiss goodbye and, as he looked her over, he said, admiringly, "Definitely no ugliness here." After she started to walk away, he added, "You keep saying I need to handle things one step at a time."

"Better than trying to deal with it all at once, isn't it?"

"Was this…was _today_…a step in a continuing series of steps?"

"I think so."

"And are these steps leading toward closure or reconciliation?"

"That isn't my decision to make alone. That's a decision we have to make together."

"But I already have my answer," he replied directly. "I know what I want. I'm waiting to hear what you want, so, ultimately, it _is _your decision."

"I know what I _want, _too. But wanting is only part of the equation. We need to see if we can transform _wanting_ into _having_ in a way that will work for both of us. That's gonna take some work. Wanting all by itself…that isn't enough."

"Neither is having," he countered. "I've already had and lost, and that didn't work out well for me. I don't just want to _have_. I want to _keep_."

"I'm coming back here tomorrow like I have every day for weeks. I'm going to keep coming back. I'm also going to keep waiting up for you every night until shortly after midnight. What you choose to do about that is _your _decision. If you really want to talk about how to take wanting and turn it into having and keeping, I'm not going anywhere."

"Okay," he answered, carefully.

Her alarm chirped again and she smiled. "Well, I guess I _am_ going _somewhere_, since I have to go home. But I'll be back. I'll also be at home all evening, with absolutely nowhere to go, should anyone choose to stop by," she very obviously suggested.


	7. Part VII: Inside

_A/N-Hey everyone. I'd like to thank you all for your interest in the story. I've received a few more questions that I can't answer directly because I can't reply to anonymous comments. I don't want to say too much in an author's note, but other characters may appear, although this one is pretty focused on House and Cuddy for the time being. I have delved into issues of House's childhood, etc, in other stories and I'm not sure how much "delving" I plan to do in this fic. I had a thought about a way to continue this beyond the original scope, but I'm trying to decide if the story has adequate "steam" to carry that additional storyline._

**Part VII: Inside  
**

* * *

After Cuddy left the apartment, everything was silent again. House went back and actually sat in Wilson's room for the first time since he had died. There were no linens on the bed, just a blanket that Cuddy had folded and placed neatly at the bottom. The hospital had sent over a new mattress that was still wrapped in plastic.

He went in and flopped on the bed, listening to the plastic creak and groan under his weight. He needed to talk to Wilson. He needed Wilson to say something mockable that still, somehow, would help House figure out what to do about Cuddy. He hadn't anticipated having sex with her since they'd reentered each other's lives. He certainly wasn't planning on making a move. If anything, he thought she was there because of guilt or pity since he was in such a pathetic state. He didn't know what the hell he'd do if she walked away now.

He tilted back his head and looked at the shitty landscape painting behind the bed, yet another thing House had failed to notice in recent weeks. He wondered if Wilson had looked at that picture on nights when pain kept him awake as he pondered his own mortality.

House knew Cuddy had helped him, especially in the darkest days just before and after Wilson's death. She'd stayed close but not too close, offered help but didn't force it, and she seemed to be the only consistent thing in his life besides the pain and the desire to make that pain go away.

He wondered if the sex was going to mess it all up. Maybe this would make her really start to think about him and their past and exactly what she was getting herself into. He didn't think sex between them could be meaningless, and then he felt a twinge in the very center of him that reminded him that he really didn't _want _it to be meaningless.

Things were functional under the terms of their preexisting relationship, and now they would inevitably be different, even if they tried to pretend they weren't. As he thought of that, thought of the fact that he needed to keep her around, he grumbled aloud, "Guess I should have kept my dick in my pants."

Then he remembered the first feeling of her hand touching him when his dick _was _technically still in his pants. The thought entered his mind, with recorded feedback from each of his senses, and before he even started to recall everything that had happened next, he could feel his body threatening to respond to even that little slice of a memory. He wasn't about to jerk off in Wilson's old room, so he closed his eyes and tried to move his thoughts away from what had happened in the last couple of hours.

"Who woulda thought you'd be ready to go _twice_ in one afternoon after all the trouble you had with me!" someone crassly said from the side of the room.

House refocused his eyes, finding the bed in the middle of a field in a stadium, surrounded by bleachers. The last hooker he'd called back when Wilson had really started to decline was sitting on the bleachers to his left. He sneered as he remembered her offer to sell him a Viagra if he'd pay for the pill and the extra time she'd spend while she waited for it to kick in. He'd paid her and sent her away. "Why in the hell are you here?" he asked.

"It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It happens," she responded, loudly.

"I'm not embarrassed," he argued. "Cancer is ugly. Death is ugly. You try watching someone get weaker and weaker as they slowly die while you clean up vomit and shit day after day and then try to get it up for the world's least attractive hooker."

"I'm not just _attractive_. I'm hot. And you know it. I was exactly what you ordered, wasn't I? I would have done anything you wanted to do. I could have been anyone. I coulda given you a break from reality."

"For a price."

"Paying for it never bothered you," she calmly said. "And neither did vomit, shit and death. Right?"

"What's your point?" he asked, snarling with frustration and folding his arms across his chest as he lay there.

"You weren't bothered by death itself…you were upset about who was dyin'. You were sad because you were watching him suffer and slip away."

"Which is why I called a hooker. It was your job to help me forget that for five fucking minutes."

"But you weren't looking for _sex_. If you wanted that, you coulda gotten it from me. You wanted something else. Obviously you didn't have trouble with her. Believe me, I see it all the time. Like it or not, the downstairs is connected to the upstairs."

"You're confusing anatomy and architecture."

"All I'm saying is—"

"I know what you're saying."

"So that's Cuddy?" a different, softer, more refined voice said. The lights in the stadium dimmed around the hooker as she faded away, and House turned his head to the right and saw the old members of his team and even a few former candidates for jobs, staggered in the bleachers, brightly lit under a spotlight. They were all dressed in lab coats and held thick, tattered files. Adams looked at House and added, "I've always wondered."

Park said, "I've heard the stories. Everyone has."

"Was she worth it? What makes her different from other women?" Adams asked, clicking a pen and putting the tip to paper as she waited for an answer.

"He's not going to answer that," Masters replied. "He'd have to admit he has a heart. That he _can _be in love."

"He doesn't need a _heart _to fuck Cuddy," Foreman said. "It's just sex. He's always had a hard on for her."

"Actually," Thirteen interjected, speaking directly to House, "the thing I find more interesting is her response. She's really shown up and been there for you. This might be a good sign. The evidence points to the fact that Cuddy has real feelings for you."

"Or that she's comforting you," Taub added. He smiled and said, knowingly, "Enjoy it while it lasts…if Cuddy were to offer me some _comfort, _I'd be happy to accept."

"Or it's possible she feels guilty," Chase said.

"Consider the situation," Kutner chimed in, "all of these weeks, alone, together, sharing something as personal as grief. Dr. Cuddy was there every day. It's not surprising that all of that emotion and energy would become sexual. Especially between people with a history like theirs."

"Maybe she's starting to see you as you really are," Cameron suggested.

"Or she's completely lost her mind," Chase replied. "Death can do that to people. Cause them to reevaluate. Cuddy's facing her own mortality and yours as well. Look what Kutner's death did to you."

"I don't think you can attribute all of that to my death," Kutner argued.

"This all brings up a very interesting question," Masters said. "Are you sure you even want this? What you had with her certainly didn't look like love to me. She _is_ getting older. You think you want a relationship with her that you can keep, but are you sure you'll still want her when her looks and body start to go? Maybe you should consider other options."

Thirteen closed her eyes and shook her head, "It isn't about her _body_. Obviously there's attraction there, but if he only wanted looks, he'd select someone new, someone he doesn't share a ton of emotional baggage with. Someone new would be less painful. Less complicated. Easier to walk away from. Sex, looks, physical attraction, he's not intimidated by those things. If we're all here to help him figure it out, it's clearly a lot more complicated than that."

"What, exactly, is it she sees in you?" Taub asked.

"It's not his good looks," Park added, high-fiving Taub.

"Dr. Cuddy has a mothering personality. You often pointed that out, right? Maybe you secretly_ liked _that about her. I think, perhaps, she's mothering you instead of a hospital. You heard her say she doesn't feel the same about this new job," Kutner added. "She needs something to take care of, you need someone to care for you. It's symbiotic."

"I'm not sure what that says about your relationship with _your_ mother, Kutner," Thirteen said. "Cuddy has a kid. That position has been filled. She doesn't need to mother a hospital or House because she has an actual child."

"Does she know about the morphine?" Chase asked, searching for information through the unwieldy file. "Relapse did help trigger the last breakup. That may be a deal breaker. And really, is tramadol different enough?"

"Maybe you should consider telling her," Adams suggested.

"He's not going to tell her," Foreman interjected.

"They weren't together when he took the morphine," Cameron argued. "It really isn't any of her business. She can't hold him accountable for it if they weren't in a relationship at the time."

"He did a lot of things when they weren't together that I'm pretty sure she holds him accountable for," Chase countered.

"Has anyone confirmed that this _is_ a relationship?" Thirteen asked, glancing through test results. "We can't just assume that a sexual encounter equals a relationship."

Henry Dobson, the one-time candidate for a spot on House's team, explained, "You clearly tried to hide it from her. Which means you don't want her to find out because you already know she wouldn't approve. I guess I'm not the only Ridiculously Old Fraud anymore."

"If it's going to go bad, it's probably better to find out now," Park said.

"Then you'll be alone," Cameron added with empathy.

Cole shook his head and dryly stated, "And who knows what you'll do if you lose her. You accused _me_ of giving Cuddy power she didn't already have, but what kind of power have _you_ given her?"

"All of you, shut up!" Foreman loudly boomed. "You're all missing the most obvious explanation when it's right in front of you. Cuddy's response is exactly what he needs, and we all know what that means. He's hallucinated this whole damn thing. Do you _really _think Cuddy's going to let him back in? You think she'd waste her time holding his hand, forgive him for what he's done—"

"What about all the things she's done to him?" Cameron interrupted. "She broke his heart over one pill!"

"But I don't think that would stop him from going back," Foreman countered. "Cuddy's not going to overlook the things he's done, spend all of that time taking care of him and then let him back in her bed. He's made up this whole thing. I think we're all hallucinations."

"What are you gonna do if she crushes you again?" Cameron asked House. "Do you really think you could survive that kind of pain, and this time without Wilson?"

The whole team started loudly arguing, and House couldn't differentiate one voice or one idea from another. He felt the urge to cover his ears and scream.

Then all of the noise came to a complete stop when he heard Amber whisper, "Could this really all be a hallucination? You and me, together again, just like old times," into his ear before she sat on the edge of his bed.

He pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes and asked, "Is that what this is?" He sat up a little, bracing his weight on his elbows, "Is everything since the morphine all in my head?"

"You're not hallucinating." Amber explained, pouting, "This is just a dream. A regular, normal, _boring_ dream. To be honest, I'm kinda disappointed. We had fun the last time, didn't we?"

"So Cuddy. She's…"

"Real. But are you sure that's the answer you want? Are you sure you want to jump into that fire again?"

House looked at Amber and then drifted into thought.

"She could really hurt you. Couldn't she?" Amber asked, waiting for an answer. "And you could really hurt her." Amber leaned against the footboard, facing him, resting her legs on the bed and crossing them at the ankles beside his legs. "If it's so dangerous, if there is such a huge chance that someone is going to get hurt, why do you want this anyway?" she asked.

"Who said I do?"

"The entire team you just evoked to discuss your case. You know this is serious."

He snipped, "Why can't I dream someone useful?"

"Like who?" she asked. "James?" House dropped his head a little, so she leaned forward and whispered, "He's here. You really don't see him?"

"Where?" House wondered, sitting up fully and searching the darkened space surrounding them.

"Up there," Amber said, pointing to the top of the bleachers straight in front of House's bed. A spot light that was on Amber zipped along the ground, covering the long distance to the very top of the bleachers. Wilson looked like he was shouting something, but House couldn't quite hear it.

He got up. His cane was nowhere to be found and the area around his bed was one vast, open space, so there was nothing to hold onto, but he needed to talk to Wilson. House took several steps, fighting for what felt like the first hundred feet or so, and then he heard Wilson shout, "You don't need a cane. This is a dream."

"So I've been told," House screamed back, and then he realized what Wilson meant. House stood taller, putting his weight more fully on his right leg. After two careful steps to test his strength, House started taking long, confident strides. After a few strides, he started to jog, and then he began a full sprint to the bleachers, running up to the top without breaking a sweat.

"See," Wilson said as House sat next to him, "you're not nearly as crippled as you think you are."

"Is that a metaphor?" House asked as he looked at his friend's restored appearance.

"Probably," Wilson smiled gently.

"It sucks without you," House somberly said.

"I know. If I could have stayed—"

"It wasn't up to you."

"You really scared me with that morphine, jackass," Wilson admonished.

"It didn't help anyway."

"Remember that next time. It didn't help you. If you would have died…"

"I'd be dead and I wouldn't have to worry about it," House said, finishing the thought.

"No, _you_ wouldn't have to worry about it. But Cuddy would have."

"But she didn't."

"But she could have. Do you have any idea what that would have done to her? She truly cares about you. If you don't want to hurt her, don't do that. You went right up to the edge with that one. You need to start thinking about this stuff."

"I don't think it's going to last long enough for that to be an issue."

"It could. You have to start acting like it could. Or it won't," Wilson argued.

"How do you know?"

"Read the evidence, House. You always say actions mean more…but when you should be looking at her actions, you're ignoring them."

"You know about what happened today?"

"I know everything you know. And those weren't the only actions I was referring to."

"She felt bad for me."

"If that were the case, she would have slept with you the day of my funeral when she _really_ felt bad for you. She was worried. She did _not_ want to leave you alone that night. She thought you might go over the edge after I died, but she was there for you anyway. You came together and shared—"

"You watched that? Pervert," House interrupted.

Wilson scowled, "That's not the 'came together' I was talking about."

"And we should forget that past?"

"No. You _need_ to remember it, but not live in it. Remember it and make different choices. I don't know if you noticed, but that is exactly what she's trying to do with you."

"How can I make sure she keeps doing that? What if she gets tired of it?"

"It's time for you to put forth some effort, or she's going to eventually see the lack of effort as disinterest. Remind her of who you are."

"Who I am? The man who could barely bring himself to sit by her side when she was sick? Or is it they guy who called her in the middle of the night because he actually thought he could do surgery on himself? Or is it the man who actually went to jail for something he did to her? I'm sure any of those will make her swoon with delight. That'll help, thanks."

"You're more than that. You were there for me. You can be there for her. You're letting her close. You…are trusting her. She sees that," Wilson shrugged.

"You act like the past is no big deal."

"It is a big deal. It's a huge deal. It's just not an _insurmountable_ deal. Let her see _you_, the man she loved."

"_If_ she loved me."

"She loved you. She still loves you. Or she wouldn't be doing all of this."

"Didn't you hear all of the stuff my team was saying?"

"They're doing what they always do during a differential diagnosis. They're considering evidence from all angles, using their own perspectives and patient history, and throwing around any and all of the possibilities. You need to sift through those possibilities and fears and continue to search through until you find the one thing you need…the truth. Not every theory they have is correct."

"I don't want to hurt her," House mumbled. "I don't want to lose her _and_ I don't want to hurt her, and I don't know how to do both."

"She doesn't want to hurt you either. This is worth it. It's worth the effort. At least let something good come from all of this," Wilson said.

House scoffed, irritated at the thought that Wilson would suggest any possible gains from his death.

"No, I'm serious," Wilson said. "You've felt terrible for so long, and nothing has helped. But being with her…helps."

"You're suggesting I _use_ her to feel better?"

"No. Not at all. I'm asking you, _why_ does being with her make you feel better?"

"Because fucking Cuddy is like—"

"Stop," Wilson interrupted. "She helped you start to feel better before the fucking."

"I don't know, Wilson."

"Because you love her, dumbass. Being around her makes you feel kinda good. You like that she's there for you. You like being there for her. You like that she's been confiding in you. She's let her guard down. You know that, and that _means_ something to you."

"Why should I take the advice of a dreamed up dead friend?"

"Because I'm in your head. I'm part of you. Everything I've said, you _already_ know."

"If I already know this stuff, why do I need to ask you?"

Wilson replied, "It's all right there in your head. You just needed someone to help you hear it. So get up. Put some real clothes on, and go over to her place so she doesn't think you regret what happened. Go get her. You've both been given another chance…not many people get that."

House's eyes darkened as he admitted, "It really sucks without you."

"Sorry," Wilson answered.

Watching the bleachers all around the vast stadium fold down in the ground as the room became smaller and smaller, House said, "Can you hang around for a few more minutes?"

"Time to get outta here," Wilson answered. "You have stuff to do."

The cold metal of the seat below House's hand became warmer, smoother and damper, and as he scraped his fingers along the material, he realized he was back in Wilson's bed. He was sweating from sleeping on the unbreathing plastic cover. Looking at the clock, he realized it was already nine. He decided it was late, too late to go to Cuddy's, so he got up and went to the kitchen for a drink and sat down to watch TV. For some reason, Wilson's phone on the floor caught House's eye. House used the remote to turn off the TV as he stood and griped, "Dammit, Wilson."

* * *

Cuddy had a nice evening with Rachel. They played some board games and finished the girl's homework and Cuddy tried not to think about whether or not House was going to show. She'd already decided she was going back tomorrow, no matter what happened tonight. Although she tried to make a neat mental list of perfectly logical reasons why he wouldn't come that had nothing to do her or that spontaneous, passionate, mind-scrambling thing they'd done earlier, she worried that he was going to avoid her.

Cuddy was standing over a dishwasher half-filled with clean dishes as she thought about what had happened. She felt a sharp breath that accompanied a hum of energy through her body as she heard his voice replaying in the back of her mind. He had been so _affected_ by her and he made no attempt to disguise that. Nothing about him had suggested disinterest or nonchalance. The honest, earnest response to her had drawn her in. She'd never remembered seeing him quite so lost inside a moment shared by the two of them, and given some of the moments they'd shared, it was really saying something.

"Miss? Miss Lisa!" a voice called from behind Cuddy.

Cuddy sort of shook out of her haze and turned, smiling at the nanny. "God, Elena, I'm sorry. I don't know where I was just then."

Elena put her backpack on the table since she'd just returned from her classes and she said, "Someone pulled into the driveway, Miss. Just as I came in. I set the alarm."

Cuddy went to a window and actually saw House's car in the driveway. "That's…I know him. He's here to see me."

Cuddy stepped back, tried to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the window and make some last minute adjustments, and then she realized that he still hadn't left his car.

Going to the side door and disarming the alarm, she stepped into her sandals and accepted Elena's somewhat insistently offered jacket and went out to the driveway. Walking up to the passenger's side, she opened the door and slid into his car. "Well," she said, "I did ask you to come over. Apparently I also should have also told you to come in."

"I was planning on coming to the door. I think."

"But…?"

"It was probably hard to tell how much I missed you after you dumped me…since I took the art of self distraction to an unprecedented level," House cringed for a moment in a way that suggested regret he hadn't spoken about. "But the one thing I wanted more than any of the distractions I found…was to have you back."

"God, House—"

"Let me finish before I change my mind," he said, watching as she closed her mouth and nodded. He continued, "I would purposefully avoid going anywhere near your place, because the one time I did, I realized your place had become home. You became home. And when you lose the place you feel most at home…" He bowed his head and touched his finger to the imprint on the steering wheel that marked the horn. "I hated it. I hated not being allowed in. I'd rather never be invited in than to be invited in and get comfortable, only to get kicked out again."

"Is that why you haven't come over?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Are you asking me to step back?" she asked, her words thick with emotion and concern.

"No," he replied, almost instantly. "But you want to do things step by step and that's not how I do things. I need to know if you're sure you want to try before I can go in there," he said, pointing at her door. "The benefits of loving and losing are lost on me. Because in the end, all you really have is the loss."

She slowly nodded, "I'm glad you told me instead of just not showing up. I thought I was pretty clear that I wanted to give things a try."

"I need to make sure you want to try _with me_. You need to remember what that entails. I'm still the same guy. I'm trying really fucking hard to stay away from narcotics, but I can pretty much guarantee that, at some point, I'm going to relapse. I'm in chronic pain and I'm imperfect and shit happens, so the likelihood is really high. I don't want to lose you because of a relapse. Knowing that will motivate me to lie about it when I do. So the thing is, when I inevitably screw up, either I can tell you about it, in which case, you'll dump me. Or I can lie about it, and when you figure it out, you'll dump me. Or I can leave first to avoid being dumped, but no matter what, the outcome's going to be the same. Loss."

"You still have your issues. I still have my issues. That hasn't changed. Hopefully how we respond to those issues _has _changed. I haven't seen you popping Vicodin and I thought that was a good sign. It was a conversation I knew we needed to have, but I was trying to give you a little time after losing Wilson. You were overwhelmed enough."

"Face it, you might not care if the guy you're babysitting is taking a little dip in the Vicodin pool, but you're going to have different expectations for a man you're considering a relationship with."

"Is that really what you think I've been doing?"

"You have a track record of trying to help. Gave me a job. You got me the ketamine treatment I wanted. Let me quit my job without a fight when I first got clean, and then gave it back to me just as easily. Part of you feels compelled to look out for me on some level. And then we were over and you didn't care anymore. Now, for some reason, you do again."

"You think I've been coming by for weeks, and then had sex with you today because I'm looking out for you?"

"There's no truth in that?"

"Maybe a little, in terms of why I first started hanging around after Wilson died, but it was more than that. In some ways it's for you, and in some ways it's selfish. _I _want you to be okay. But that had nothing to do with the reason I had sex with you."

"Okay. So why did you have sex with me?"

Cuddy pulled her feet up under her because it was cold out in his car. "For weeks you and I have been together. No one has ever listened to me the way you have lately. I mean that…no one. You've listened without judgement. You seemed _interested_. And when you finally started to answer some questions, I was drawn in. You weren't answering a boss you had to work around or a girlfriend you were trying to keep off your back, you were just answering me. I think we've probably given more straightforward answers to each other in the last few weeks than we did in the twenty-five years previous. We've hung onto each other these last few weeks. We're so close and so connected, but I'm not allowed to _really _touch you. It's discordant to be so intimate with someone that you have really intense feelings for and really intense history with, but you can't get close enough to hug him with both arms at the same time."

"Which proves my point."

"It wasn't just to comfort you, House. I wasn't there for _you_ today…we were there for each other. We're sharing this deep, intimate relationship that is unconventional and strange, but at the same time it's kinda good. It's raw and it's real and it's honest. We've made a connection. I haven't felt that way, connected, in a really long time. Relationships are supposed to be that way, aren't they?"

"I'm hardly an expert. I _know_ how I feel when I'm with you is a vast improvement from the way I feel without you. And I don't want that to go away."

Cuddy pulled her feet out from under her and stretched her legs before she unexpectedly stepped out of the car. She could see the uncertainty on his face as she walked around the front to his door and opened it. Leaning down a little, she said, "In the interest of full disclosure…I can't invite you to spend the night. That would be strange for my daughter, and I think she needs to get to know you before that happens. If you come in, you'll probably see Elena, the nanny. She has her own suite, but I often see her in the evenings after Rachel's sleeping. I know you don't want to socialize, but I can't kick her out."

At first he seemed hopeful, like he was ready to hop out of the car, then he settled back into his seat. "Are you sure you've thought about this?" he questioned.

"I feel better when I'm with you, too, and I don't want it to go away either. I understand that you don't want to do this unless I'm serious, but I am. We're talking. We're fumbling our way through this. Let's keep fumbling."

He stepped out, standing next to the rather large building she now called home. She opened the door, holding it open for him with her foot. When he didn't immediately follow, she reached out her hand for him and asked, "Are you coming?"

Although he tentatively climbed the only step to the door, as he finally set foot inside her home, he took hold of her hand with a firm, decisive grip. She smiled broadly, unable to mute her reaction to his decision. She'd expected him to start looking around and exploring her new residence immediately, but his eyes fell on her and remained. "I'm ready for the tour," he replied.


	8. Part VIII: Last Resorts

_A/N: Hey all. Just back from vacation so this chapter was delayed a bit. Here's the next installment. _

_A general note to those who feel Cuddy should not have forgiven House so easily...I am approaching this story from a perspective of grief and shared grief, as was my intention when I began. I am exploring a reunion through that very specific lens. This has also taken place over many weeks, and not every moment or discussion between them has been specifically detailed in the story. I understand that people have different views on how things should go between them, but this is how I've chosen to handle it in this particular story. To really delve into their past, I'd need a hundred chapters (which I have done in other stories), and this story simply won't be that long or detailed, although some topics will still surface as we continue. I fully understand this story isn't going to "work" for everyone, but please remember, this is just one piece of House fanfiction (out of over 20,000 on this site), and there are many amazing works by fantastic authors that explore those very things and might be more satisfying to read. Thanks, as always, for **all** of your comments.  
_

* * *

**Part VIII: Last Resorts**

Cuddy started to show House around. They made it through the kitchen and dining room. House saw the nanny disappear quietly from the living room just as they entered. Cuddy was talking about something, sort of contentedly chattering away while House's mind continued to spin.

"Do you talk about this with her? Your therapist," he said suddenly.

"About you?" Cuddy asked.

"You and me," he replied, sitting down on the sofa and forcing a momentary end to the tour.

"Often. Does that bother you?"

"She thinks it's fine for us to mourn together, hang out…but what would she say about getting back into a relationship?" he skeptically questioned.

"She doesn't give or withhold permission. That's not how it works."

"Still. I'm sure she has opinions."

"I'm sure she does, too. Some of which she shares with me, some of which she doesn't. Why?"

"I think you're looking at this whole relationship without addressing certain realities—"

"You want to talk about this practically?" she interrupted, her throat tightening. "Are you sure you're ready for that?"

"I wouldn't be asking otherwise."

"Okay. Let's do a quick reality check. You're dead. I've wondered a few times if I should contact an attorney in case the cops find you and start questioning me. I'm housing you and have not notified the authorities. That can't possibly be legal. And what if you are caught and go to jail, how many years are we going to lose together?"

"Enough years that the phrase, 'Cuddy, wait for me,' would be ridiculous."

"At some point, someone who knows me is going to see you and recognize you. It's going to happen. You don't blend in well. Then there's the matter of my daughter. We're a package deal. Are you _really_ going to be okay with that?" She paused when she saw him scribbling on the back of a magazine, and said with frustration, "You were the one who wanted to talk about this."

He paused, glancing up for just a second before he kept writing, "Not ignoring you. What else have you got?"

"Those aren't enough problems?"

"Might as well know what we're dealing with," he insisted.

"We have all of our old issues…will you relapse and what will happen in the aftermath, will I feel the need to change you, will you _really_ be happy with a normal, boring life with Rachel and me, will I get hurt, will you get hurt, I could go on and on, but let's just put it under the gigantic umbrella of 'our history.' And in spite of all of these very practical, very serious concerns…I want to be with you. Which is both romantic and crazy."

"All of those people who considered you the sane one should reevaluate," he said, narrowing his eyes and smirking for a moment. He held out the paper he'd been scribbling on and said, "As far as I'm concerned, there's only one problem that really needs to be resolved immediately. If we can't solve that one problem, then dealing with the rest is pointless."

"Which is that?"

"Before I came in here you said we have the same issues we had before, but hopefully we'll respond to them differently."

"Yes."

"That's like having a dying patient and deciding your plan of action is 'to treat them.' That's obvious, but _how_ will you treat them?"

"I guess…we should try to avoid jumping to conclusions or making assumptions. We need to try to be more open and honest about what's going on and how we feel about things so we can avoid misinterpretations."

"I've always been very upfront with you. Probably too upfront."

Cuddy seemed momentarily a little surprised as she shook her head and then cautiously answered, "In some ways. But sometimes I think you hide the whole truth behind smaller, blunter truths. Telling the whole truth, even the stuff that you may not want to admit…makes you vulnerable. There is so much I don't know about you…and I've known you for a very long time. I don't think you often told me the whole truth, and you very rarely told me how you _felt_ about much of anything."

"And you did?"

She breathed in sharply as she thought, fighting the initial instinct to defend herself to reply, "No. I didn't either."

He frowned and looked around the room before he stood up and continued the tour. He walked back out to the kitchen and opened the door to a workshop that joined the kitchen and garage. It was obvious from the number of shelves, drawers and hooks on the wall that someone who lived there must have had a large number of tools. House walked over to the workbench and focused on Cuddy's meager collection, one hammer and two screwdrivers, and fanned them out across the surface.

She followed him into the workshop, pulling the door shut behind her before folding her arms around her body to combat the chill. "Was this gigantic altar to rugged manly fix-it-ness built for an ex?" he asked.

"Previous owner," she clarified.

"So whose tools are these?" he suspiciously questioned.

"Mine. I can handle the basics, hang pictures and change the batteries in Rachel's toys."

"You need a hammer to change batteries?"

"Screwdrivers. Almost all toys come with batteries and the batteries come with safety covers and the safety covers have tiny little recessed safety screws. It's a pain in the ass. Is that really what you want to know or are you trying to ask if I've been seeing anyone?" she asked, crossing her arms more tightly.

"If you're currently seeing someone who is not tall, grey and gimpy, you cheated on him earlier today."

"This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're deflecting and avoiding when it would be easier to ask. Instead of asking, you're going to look for evidence, and the evidence just might be misleading. So…ask me if I'm seeing anyone else," she said, standing right in front of him, daring him.

"Are you?" he asked as he refused to back away from the challenge.

"No," she answered directly. "I was until about eight months ago. He was nice. Cute. Kind. Very sweet."

"You don't like sweet," House commented knowingly.

"I think he was what I needed at the time."

"So why didn't it work with anti-House rebound guy?"

"I wanted to love him. But I didn't."

"And you didn't want to love me, but did."

"What about you? Anyone significant?"

"No," he said as if the question were inane.

"Last time I checked you were married. It wasn't a stupid question."

"Divorced."

"Amicably?"

He winced as he considered the answer and replied, "More amicably than you and I split."

"Which would be true for about 98% of all breakups."

"True. I left her a pretty hefty chunk of money in my will, so I'm thinking she probably feels more amicable about me now than she did when she left."

"She left you but you willed her money anyway?"

"She liked me. At least I think she did. I liked her."

"Oh," Cuddy answered sharply.

House took his time exploring a reaction he hadn't even thought to anticipate. "_Like_," he finally clarified, "not love."

"That hurt like hell, ya know," Cuddy added, the words spilling into the air, "when you married her."

"It didn't mean anything."

"But it _did_ mean something. You weren't the only one who had their heart broken."

"It wasn't real."

"It hurt me, House. You can't explain that away. Seeing you with someone else, whether it was real to you or not…really fucking hurt. Look at how you reacted when you saw me with another man! And I wasn't _marrying_ him."

"You dumped me. Remember? And my wedding wasn't real. Your date was."

"It was _dinner_. Your actions weren't meaningless. Marrying her wasn't meaningless to me. You need to know that."

"It won't happen again. I won't hurt you like that again," he said adamantly. He paused, dropping his gaze for a moment before he forced himself to look at her again. "Even if your date was more than just dinner...you didn't deserve my reaction."

"I didn't," she answered directly.

"So the nice guy you didn't love…he wasn't a heartbreaker?"

Cuddy smiled sadly, shaking her head and admitting, "My _heart_ hasn't been involved in any relationship since you. I was taking some time to myself. And then you showed up."

"So we're both single. And we thought this whole thing was _complicated_!" he joked.

"We can handle this. Can't we? We can communicate, share thoughts."

"There are thoughts in my head that I don't think you want to know."

"Do you really think they're that bad?"

He nodded, "Once a person knows something, they can't unknow it, and sometimes once they know, things are never the same."

"After everything that we did to each other, everything that happened, what exactly do you think I could learn that would change things? We've already seen the worst in each other. Do I look at you differently than I used to?"

He searched her face for the answer before he said, "Yea. You do." She turned away, momentarily unsteady, but then he admitted, "I didn't say it was bad…but it is different. I haven't been my usual challenging self lately. You're being gentle."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"No. But I'm starting to feel a little better. Are you still going to want to deal with me when I'm more…me?"

"Yes. I like you when you're _you_. You weren't really _you_ when our relationship ended. I'm not asking you to be someone else…I'm asking you to be you, the man I knew for years."

He lurched toward a counter argument, but decided he liked her answer, "I wasn't exactly at my best. But you stopped caring. You didn't give me a chance, and you _always_ gave me another chance. There was a time when I thought you weren't even capable of giving up on me. So you weren't you either. The woman I knew before wouldn't have ended it because I relapsed."

She, too, seemed prepared to argue, but shrugged, "Fine. So we'll try to be who we are, _and_ let the other person see exactly who that is."

"Easier said than done. You're still not always completely honest. I can tell," he accused.

"I've been trained to hide things from you. You were always on the hunt for my secrets and dirty laundry."

"I'm a vault. You can tell me anything."

"I was never concerned that you'd tell people. You would dig and pry and hunt for skeletons to use. So sure, I'm hesitant to give you too much ammunition. It's intimidating to confide in someone who may use what he knows against me."

He said, leaning against the chair in front of the workbench. "You have a lot of horrible secrets hidden here in your perfect home and at your perfect job and in your perfect life?"

"My life is very far from perfect."

"I like imperfections. I'm full of them. Show me yours," he encouraged. She shook her head, obviously pondering the challenge that he'd placed before her. He coaxed, "You were the one who said _we_ need to be more open. That means both of us. Doesn't it?"

"It does."

"It's _your _solution. I'm ready. Make it something good."

She firmed her jaw as she prepared to dive in, took a moment to think of something, spent one final second considering her choice, and then spoke quite clearly, "Did I tell you why I first started seeing a therapist?"

"You said you felt lost after you left Jersey."

"There's more to it than that." Cuddy took a slow breath, tentatively answering, "After we moved, Rachel started acting out. At school, at home…everywhere. A counselor at school suggested therapy. I'd decided Rach was stressed about the move and being away from family, so I agreed. Each time, her therapist would spend some time with just Rachel, some time with both of us and then end with just me. One day during our one-on-one time, the therapist asked if I was in a relationship. I stood up and was halfway out the door, mumbling something about my last catastrophe and never, ever getting into a serious relationship again. She asked me to stop and look at myself in her mirror. My whole body was tense and defensive and angry just from being asked the question. Honestly, I barely even recognized my reflection. And then she suggested that Rachel was responding to my heightened level of stress and anxiety, and then I _really_ got frustrated. Started talking about her need to assign blame and choosing me as the scapegoat."

Cuddy partially covered her face with her hand as she remembered that day and then she looked right at House and said, "I wasn't even half way down the hall when it all hit me. If I'd been trying to prove that I wasn't completely crazy, I failed epically. I went home that night and I kept hearing myself, seeing that angry reflection that didn't even look like me anymore. And then, oh my god, the guilt. To think that my stress was reaching Rachel. And I honestly thought I was completely calm, cool and the- -the picture of poise the whole time. I really thought I was keeping all of that from her. I never thought she was hurt by what I was going through. Even if I didn't want to deal with my feelings for my own benefit, I needed to do it for Rachel."

"Did it help her?" he asked with intent interest.

"Yea. It really did. It took some time. It took me a lot longer to really start to improve, but at least I had an outlet for everything I'd kept pent up. I try _really_ hard to be a good mom. It's important to me. Until that day, I thought I was. And then I found out that I was the thing in my child's life that was hurting her. I've always wanted to make her feel safe and secure…but I found out I was the monster giving her bad dreams."

He replied, shaking his head, his expression severe, "You couldn't be that monster, even if you tried. Trust me. A monster wouldn't be bothered by the fact that she hurt her child. That's in the past, and it's clearly still killing you. Monsters don't go to therapy for their child's wellbeing. Stop beating yourself up. You think you're the first mother to get stressed?"

"No. But I tried to handle everything on my own. Tried to pretend nothing around me could get to me. And when everything I've shoved deep down finally caught up with me…I spent weeks in therapy just falling apart before I could even start to rebuild."

He swiveled in the chair a few times. "Why'd you tell me that?"

"You said to make it good."

"I expected a level five or six confession…you gave me what was, for you, probably a level nine or ten."

"You want to know how we're going to handle things differently? Like this. Like admitting the things that are almost impossible to admit…and trusting the other person with that knowledge. I'm taking a step."

She walked closer, watching him roll one screwdriver over the workbench as he thought, giving her absolutely no clue about what he'd thought of her confession. Finally looking at her, he nodded quickly and said, "Don't worry about getting a lawyer. I wasn't some high level criminal mastermind. I'm not on any most wanted lists, and I'm dead, so no one is looking for me. If, for some weird reason, I'm found and you're questioned, tell them I threatened your kid."

She said, her upper lip curling unhappily, "Why would I say that?"

"Rachel needs you. You're a good mother. There aren't many of those around, so it would be a shame to waste it. I won't let you go to jail for helping me. This is my mess. I'll figure out how to fix it. But until then, if you're questioned about your involvement with me, tell them that I showed up at your hospital with Wilson. I threatened you and Rachel and forced you to help him and give me a place to hide for a while," he said quietly, patting the tabletop before he helped her hop onto it.

"That's a terrible plan."

"It makes sense. Any cop who reviews my record is going to believe that story. They're not going to press charges against a mother who's trying to protect herself and her daughter from an ex with my history."

His hands rested on her knees, his fingers skating over her silky pajama bottoms until she placed her hands over his to stop him. Leaning until she was at his eyelevel she vehemently declared, "I won't say that."

"Then I'll confess and tell them you have Stockholm syndrome."

"That will add to your list of charges. I'm supposed to convince you to trust me, to open up and put it on the line with me, and meanwhile, you're actually asking me to betray you?"

"I'm giving you a backup plan. If it comes to that, we don't have many options left."

She looked almost ill as she wrapped her arms low around her tummy. He stood, moving a hand behind each knee and delicately parting her legs and pulling her forward. "The thought of turning you in is not turning me on," she argued.

"That's a relief," he said, trying to lighten her plummeting mood. "I'm not asking you to turn me in. I'm trying to protect you if it all goes wrong…it's a plan of last resort."

"Well it hurts," she confessed.

"Tell me where it hurts. I'll kiss it better," he smirked as his hand slipped up her arm.

As he brought his head to the center of her chest, she caught his chin with her finger and said, "But the best sex in the world won't solve your legal problems. We barely got started and we're already planning what to do if it all goes wrong."

"We'll work on our stuff together, but the legal stuff is my problem. I won't let you pay for my mistakes, but I need time to figure it out on my own."

"Okay," she finally answered, unenthusiastically accepting the current situation.

"Until then, we have more important matters to discuss. You obviously have a few things that have been completely neglected lately. And I'm just the man to un-neglect them." The legs of the chair in front of the bench screeched over the concrete floor as he moved closer, his chest between her knees, his eyes looking over her body and lingering for a moment at her thighs.

"_Completely_ neglected is a bit strong."

"You can't hide it from me," he said, reaching behind her and sticking his fingers under the elastic of her panties, "this thing has been ignored so long it's all dusty, cobwebs hanging from it…" She started to scowl, so just before he tugged her clothes down, he added, "I meant the workbench."

He scratched her thigh with his scruff, clearing the space behind her with one decisive sweep of his hand that sent her sparse collection of tools rolling across the surface until they thudded and tinked onto the floor. "Is _that_ what you meant?" she tried to counter, the acerbic tone that she'd intended getting lost in the pull of her persistent attraction for him.

"I hate to see something so inviting being unused," he replied, watching as her foot slinked over his shoulder and behind his back, her heel pressing him closer to her. "Subtle, Cuddy," he commented confidently.

"I know what I want. We're trying to be more honest…more direct," she answered, her finger hooking into the collar of his tee and encouraging him. She watched as his smirk became more pronounced while his hands pressed her thighs back against the surface of the workbench and his lips came closer to her sex. His eyes were trained on hers, desire softening his usual piercing stare, and just as the very tip of his tongue found a drip of her wetness, she leaned back on her elbows and sighed with unguarded relief.

He fucking loved getting her off. The taste and sight of her alone were enough to start making him hard, and the realization that his body wasn't as useless and aged as he'd once feared was exciting in its own way. In one short day, she'd proven he was still very much the sexual being he'd always been.

One hand on her thigh, keeping her legs parted as he dipped his tongue inside her, he used his other hand to open his zipper. He wanted to feel _this_, to feel her turned on, to let himself be hard and wanting as his mind numbed and his heart thudded and he felt so alive with her. He curled his fingers around his cock as his tongue continued to flick over her clit and then push into her alternatingly, and the she sat up. "Are you jerking off?" she asked. He shook his head, refusing to stop what he was doing or ruin his rhythm to use words.

She pushed him away, looking down at his hand on his sex as she said friskily, "I guess I still turn you on."

"You don't know the half of it," he admitted.

"But I want my turn," she replied, hopping down, kissing him and nibbling his bottom lip. "So no jerking off."

She watched him watching her. He couldn't stop looking at her, actually. She'd opened herself up to him in recent days, made confessions, allowed herself to be vulnerable. Somehow, in spite of pointing a finger at her own vulnerabilities, she was stronger, sexier, more confident for those admissions.

She misread his stare as solely sexual, reaching out and stroking his length as she whispered, "I can be chivalrous. I'll go first this time."

Her hands held his hips, her lips descending on him as she met his gaze. Her eyes heavy with both desire and affection, the look shot right into the center of him until she took him in her mouth, his head lulling as pleasure shoved all thought from his mind.

* * *

The plan had been to finally go through Wilson's belongings. It was a task House had asked her to put off repeatedly until she finally convinced him it was time. She'd promised he wouldn't have to get rid of anything he wanted to keep. In exchange, she told him she'd arranged for Rachel to sleepover with a friend, so they'd have their first full night alone since they'd begun seeing each other again. She arrived at the apartment after work that Friday night and he dragged her to bed without even mumbling "hello" until she was naked beneath him. They were finally alone for an entire night together, without the need to run off or get dressed or worry about what time it was.

In the early hours of the morning, she stood next to the bed, wearing his shirt, and started to stretch. He left for the bathroom and when he returned, he lay on the floor, looking up at her. She tried to concentrate on her stretches, but it was hard when he was right under her. He grew impatient and pulled her down onto him. "We have a job to do today," she cautioned.

"In a minute," he said, groaning when she slid higher on his body, pressing against him. "I'm not numbing myself with drugs and hookers. I'm just finding some support in the arms of a woman who loves me," he suggested, and then waited for her response.

She paused for a mere second, but he noticed, of course. "Is that what you're doing?" she affectionately asked.

"You tell me," he replied, his hands slipping up under his shirt that she wore.

Nodding, she replied, "That seems like a much healthier approach, but we still can't avoid—"

"I'm not avoiding," he interrupted. "We'll get to work shortly."

He closed his arms around her, feeling her settling against him. He was just touching her, holding her, and neither of them seemed to mind that in the least. As much as he didn't care for the word, they were _cuddling_, and something about it felt fantastic enough to allow that word to come into his consciousness in a way that didn't make him sneer.

Then something changed. He felt her whole body stiffen as she lifted up, stretching and reaching across the floor behind his head. She grabbed something from under the bed, her eyes expressing curious confusion. She pulled the object of interest closer, rolling it between her fingers as she studied it.

As he realized what she held, and the story it told, his grip loosened from her as his hands fell to the floor. He wasn't sure if he started to sit up first or if she pulled away, but he wanted to get upright in case he actually puked. His neck and face grew hot first, then his entire body as he felt panic and nausea and uncertainty build. He wanted to somehow fast-forward through the next few minutes so he could know how this was all going to turn out. He didn't want to wait, allowing things to unfold. He needed answers and conclusions because every second he waited felt like someone was wringing out his very being.

He wasn't sure how to read her as she stared at that little rubber stopper, surrounded by a gleaming metal ring. That tiny piece of evidence must have popped off his vial of morphine the night when he'd relapsed and angrily thrown the bottle against the wall. He remembered cleaning up the pieces of glass after Cuddy had left that morning, but he'd felt too miserable and disconnected to be concerned with whether he'd gotten every little piece. It was another mistake allowed by grief, a detail in a sea of details that he'd somehow forgotten to hone in on in the wake of Wilson's death. He'd been sloppy.

It was time for damage control. He'd already made the mistake and she held the evidence. His first impulse was to lie, but it was too dangerous and if he breached trust now, he doubted he'd ever get it back. As he tried to think of what to say or how to approach, she asked one simple question, "When?"

She looked blank, not angry or sad, just completely stoic and probably a little disoriented as she looked to him for an answer. Her question carried its own honesty. She knew what she held and what it meant. His resistance to the question, to the whole situation, shook through him. He didn't want to answer her. He didn't want her to know. He wanted to go back and remember to find every piece. He wanted to hide the proof that he'd been overwhelmed, that he'd caved beneath the pain. Part of him even wished that he'd told her the truth the night they'd discussed relapse in her driveway. At least then she wouldn't have discovered his slip.

She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the side of the bed, the same place where she'd first offered him comfort as he'd wept over Wilson's death, and he wondered if she'd break his heart sitting in the same spot where she'd first tried to help it heal. She didn't press or accuse as she waited, seemingly calling upon an endless reserve of patience. She sat, still holding that stupid rubber stopper as she waited for his words to catch up to her question. He looked at her with the sincerest expression, his tongue too numb and heavy, and his throat too tight to allow words to easily come. Finally, he choked out, "After the funeral."

She nodded, "I knew I shouldn't have left you alone."

"You couldn't watch me forever."

"I didn't want to leave that night."

"It would have happened eventually. I told you that from the start."

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, looking less stoic and more angry, or maybe hurt. He could feel her emotions colliding in her as if they were his own.

"You want me to tell you every fucked up thing I've done?"

"Not every. This is different and you know it." She looked up at the opening to the crawl space and stated, "This is what you have up there."

"Had," he answered. "I ditched the rest. If it makes you feel better, it didn't help the pain."

"This was because of your leg?" she asked, searching for truth.

God, that lie would have been so easy, and impossible to truly disprove. His leg had hurt that night. It had been agonizing, but he knew that wasn't the reason. He started to nod and said, "It did help my leg. But that's not why I took it."

Her shoulders dropped a little as a hint of relief showed at his honest answer. "You should have told me. I've been so damn honest with you. I've told you things…things I never thought I could trust you with. But you couldn't tell me this?"

"We weren't together when it happened. I used clean needles because I'm not a complete _moron_, so there was no risk to you. It wasn't relevant."

"It wasn't _relevant_?" she asked, gritting her teeth as every muscle in her face and neck tensed. "You were in so much pain that you turned to morphine…at least I'm assuming that's what we're dealing with here?"

"Yea."

"So you were in so much pain that you turned to morphine, but it's not relevant to any of the discussions we've had?"

"It hasn't happened since we're back together."

"Would you tell me if it did?"

He nodded immediately, then his nod became less certain as he said, "I think so."

"You _think_ so?"

"Self-preservation is hard to turn off. I don't want this to be over."

"But I'm _here_. You're going to have to start to trust that. You keep categorizing things into my problems and your problems. Drugs, your death and legal problems, you think those are all your messes and I should just forget that they're there? That's no way to have a relationship. They're _our_ messes, House. You don't have to do this shit on your own. The same way you didn't have to deal with Wilson on your own. It's the same thing. This connection we have can spread beyond Wilson."

"I have a lot more, much messier messes than you do. And you don't like messy things."

"We need to stop separating our lives into two separate spheres that frequently overlap for sex and conversation during lunch and after hours."

"Does this mean you're not going to end it?"

"I'm _not_ ending it. But we can't keep these lines of demarcation. I'm not sure what else I can do to reassure you."

She'd come to him years earlier with a question of love: _Could they work?_ That question, that experiment, had failed. It had been equivocal, tenuous and fragile. Now, she was there before him, annoyed that he hadn't quite grasped the fact that it wasn't just a question anymore. It was no longer a hypothesis to be proven or disproven. She knew with conviction. She had faith that it _could _work. Her frustration, bordering on fury, at the fact that he had yet to comprehend her certainty was the thing that finally made him start to really believe it himself.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"I want you to trust me."

"You're the only person in the world I was willing to talk to after Wilson died. If that's not an indication of trust, I'm not sure what is."

"It needs to go beyond that."

"I know," he admitted.

"Any progress on the legal front?"

"I'm working on it. When I have a decent plan, you'll be the first to know."

"And the drugs?"

"I got rid of the morphine and I haven't touched it since the night of the funeral. I'm off Vicodin. Completely. I'm trying to stay that way," he said in an attempt to lay his cards on the table.

"So what are you doing for pain?"

A secondary wave of tension rose in his throat as he wondered how this was going to go. She'd asked a direct question that had a specific answer. He went to the shelf, grateful for his slow gait because it bought him a little more time. He wasn't sure how she'd take his solution for pain, but he also wasn't ready to give up the one thing that got him through the worst days. He took a key out of one book and then grabbed his safe and opened it. Before she could see inside, he said, "Ibuprofen daily. When it's bad I have a backup plan because without a backup plan, I'm more likely to reach for something I'm trying to avoid."

"Okay," she said, waiting for the rest of the explanation.

He held up an orange bottle and tossed it to her, listening to the contents rattle as they shifted in the air. She caught it, closing her fingers around it, and seemed somewhat hesitant to look at the label. He wondered if she knew how disconcerting it was to put his only real option for pain relief in her hands. Staring at it for just a minute or two, she spoke. "Tramadol? Is a synthetic opiate as effective?"

"Less effective than Vicodin. More effective than ibuprofen."

"Less habit forming."

"I'm not taking any chances," he answered, honestly, "I'm taking them only when I can't _not_ take them."

"How did you get them?"

"Used my new identity. Forged records that indicated I was the victim of a gunshot wound to the thigh that did extensive muscle and nerve damage. Since I didn't want anyone poking around my leg, I told them I was having back and shoulder pain because of walking with a cane. They ran some scans, asked some questions, the story checked out and they gave me this."

"So you got them legally?" she asked, stunned.

"Sort of. If you remove the pieces about forging medical records, using a false identity and lying to obtain a prescription."

She stared at the label for a long time, leaving him to wonder what was going to come next. He didn't want to lose the pills she held in her hand, but it wasn't the same feeling he used to have at the thought of losing his Vicodin. At the moment, he was more concerned about the thought of losing her. "You're almost out," she said, finally looking away from the label and into the bottle.

"That one bottle lasted months. I'm going to have to find someone local to go to. Probably not a good idea to have you prescribing."

"I'll give you the name of a doctor near here. She wanted to run trials at my hospital. She could prescribe the tramadol, but she's also involved in a few experimental pain treatments…intrathecal pumps and even a few electrical nerve stimulation implants. I spoke to her about a year ago, some of the newer innovations are promising."

"That's not going to cure anything."

"No. It won't. But you were open minded enough to look for other options and try tramadol. And if tramadol is better than ibuprofen, maybe you should see if there's an option that's better than tramadol. If the result is a little less pain, I don't see how it could hurt to ask about her work. It's your body. Ultimately it's your decision. But if you want, I'll make a call."

"You're taking this pretty well," he said, a little suspiciously, his limbs feeling a little shaky and weak as the tension waned.

"Because I think you're telling me the truth. Punishing you for that won't encourage you to be honest in the future," she cautiously explained.

"I didn't lie," he insisted. "You didn't ask and it happened before—"

"I know. Before we were together. But consider the question already asked from now on. Maybe even consider reaching out before it gets that bad. This is the kind of thing I want to know about. Don't lie to me. By omission or otherwise."

"Okay."

She sighed. "We're still messed up. We're acting like I'm your mistress…or maybe you're mine. I'm not sure."

"Probably both."

"Which is stupid. When's it going to stop being your mess and my mess and become _our_ mess? I think it's time to bring you into the rest of my life. You need to meet Rachel. Come hang out with us and make sure this is what you want. Because being with me means a ready-made family. This is the situation you walk right into, and it's not going to change. If you don't want this kind of life—"

He answered, immediately. "I want you. The kid and I will be fine."

"She's a whole other person…not some detail in my past or in my life. We need to make sure this is what you want, and you won't know until you try. When Elena has class this week, we'll have dinner with Rachel. Just the three of us."

House felt uncertain, but knew how stubborn Cuddy could be once she made up her mind. Plus, part of him was curious to see what would happen once they tried to migrate their affair into an actual relationship. He replied, "I'll be there."

* * *

Cuddy had told House about her plans for an evening for the three of them, an evening that was supposed to be casual and comfortable, like a normal evening at home. Although House had some concerns about how this meeting would go, he wasn't really prepared to face the situation when he'd arrived at the Cuddy home the night _before_ he was supposed to meet Rachel again. He wasn't thinking about their plans or the fact that children so often have plans of their own. He was actually thinking about the fact that he really didn't want to drive back to the apartment later that night.

Often they'd had sex at her place after everyone else was asleep, in the half bath or the garage or her home office, any place with a lock on the door and enough privacy, but he'd never slept in her bed. Cuddy had offered for him to stay many times in the preceding days as long as he was willing to leave before Rachel woke up. He'd answered her each time quite honestly, saying that it would only make him less cooperative when it was time to go home, and it was better to wait. In recent days, the drive to the apartment in the early morning hours had become his least favorite part of the day.

He and Cuddy had fallen asleep earlier in the evening on the sofa. He didn't wake until he felt colder when she got up and tiptoed out of the room. The wind whipped bitterly outside, and he could see between the split in the curtains that cold, pelting rain was falling. He definitely didn't feel like leaving his comfy spot in Cuddy's warm, dry home for a soaking walk to the car and a quiet drive home to an empty apartment that wasn't even his own. He was starting to consider accepting her invitation into her bed and then trying to convince her to let him stay if he would agree to stay out of sight until after Rachel had left for school.

When he heard steps behind the sofa, he turned his head to accept Cuddy's invitation, but he heard an unexpected voice say, "I can't sleep. Where's my mom?"

House turned and stared, knowing that his eyes were wide and his expression bewildered, but unable to erase the look from his face. A taller, older, more aware Rachel Cuddy stood several feet away, engrossed in her sleepy examination of the visitor.


	9. Part IX: Filbert

**Part IX: Filbert**

House had seen pictures and heard plenty of stories about Rachel in recent days, but facing her in person was altogether different. She was taller and lankier than she'd been the last time he had seen her, with the same dark hair and blue eyes and a disapproving expression that so closely mimicked her mother's. For a fleeting second, House thought that, had he and Cuddy stayed together, he would have watched Rachel grow into this girl who stood before him. She was probably around seven by now, he started to think as she spoke slowly so he could understand, "Where's Mom?"

He shook his head as he heard water gushing through the pipes, and he said, "Uh…shower. I think. She didn't say."

Rachel turned toward the stairs and then looked back at him like she was expecting him to do or say something more. Through her child's perspective, she didn't seem to feel the need to fill the silence or put him at ease.

Finally, he said, "Maybe you should go back to bed. I'll tell your mom you were looking for her."

Rachel frowned a bit and shook her head, "No, thanks."

He thought she would have done exactly as he'd suggested, and when she didn't, he wasn't sure what in the hell to say. He watched while she sat on the chair adjacent to the sofa he was on, and started drumming her fingers on her knee.

"Do you need something? I mean...something I can get for you?" he asked.

"My arm hurts."

He nodded, taking a sip from the bottle of water Cuddy had left on the coffee table. "What happened to it?"

Rachel stood again, holding out her forearm right in front of him as she replied, "I hit it on the door knob."

"Why'd you do that?"

"It wasn't on _purpose_," she defended.

He didn't see any marks on her arm. Impatiently, she pointed to a spot of skin and said, "See. That's where it hurts."

Looking at the nonexistent mark and then at her face, he was preparing to point out the complete lack of evidence of any damage to her arm when he remembered exactly what to do. He stood, grabbed his cane, and gestured toward the kitchen. "You coming or not?" he asked.

He limped out carefully since he'd been sleeping and his leg was stiff and sore, and the girl followed a few steps behind. Even after years apart, he remembered some of what he'd learned from his time with the child. This particular treatment had always worked before.

Opening the freezer, he started to search through the contents when he heard Rachel say, "Can I have a popsicle?"

He leaned back so he could see her around the door, and he asked, "No. Where's that frozen dog?"

"We don't freeze dogs," Rachel replied, staring at House with childlike horror.

"Not a _real_ dog," he impatiently replied, "that frozen, stuffed dog ice pack you use when you get hurt."

She crossed her arms, "It's a monkey."

"Dog, rabbit, monkey. Same thing. It's cold. Where is it?"

"I haven't used the 'boo monkey' since I was five!" she answered, scandalized by the suggestion.

"Wow. _That_ long ago?" he replied, shutting the freezer door.

"Why'd you close the door?"

"You said you didn't want the frozen thing!"

"I still need _ice_," she insisted.

He stared up at the ceiling as he heard the water upstairs shut off, and he wished Cuddy would appear immediately. He grabbed a few cubes of ice and dropped them in a zip-top bag, wrapped it in a towel and gave it to her. "Better?" he asked as she put it on the wrong arm.

She sat on the kitchen stool, her legs swinging while he leaned on the counter and waited because he didn't know what else to do. "So," she said after a while, "you're the one Mom's been going on dates with."

He wished he'd asked Cuddy exactly what she'd told her daughter. "I hope so," he responded.

"Ian used to take me places for 'bonding time,'" Rachel said.

"Hunh?"

"The guy my mom used to go on dates with. Ian…," she said, like House should know. "He used to bring me lots of presents, too."

Cuddy had told House about her ex, but hearing a name and knowing that Rachel had known the man seemed to make him realer. "What did he bring you?" House asked.

"Toys. Movies. This pillow that was like a real unicorn."

"That's a terrible gift. Roll over in your sleep and you get a horn through the eye. Was that his idea of a present…blindness?" House retorted, watching a giggle flicker over Rachel's face before she decided she wasn't ready to laugh so easily.

"It wasn't _that _real."

"He was trying to buy you."

"What?" Rachel asked.

"He was giving you stuff so that you'd like him."

"Yea," the girl affirmed without the slightest disapproval.

"I'm not going to buy you stuff to make you like me," House admitted.

Rachel raised one eyebrow. "Can I have that popsicle now?"

"I just said I'm not going to buy you."

"But you didn't buy those. Mom did."

House's sleepy mind silently agreed there was truth to her logic, so he grabbed a popsicle and tossed it to her. She balanced the ice on her arm and opened the popsicle wrapper with her teeth and started to eat.

"Did it work?" he asked, curiously. "Did you like him?"

Rachel took a big bite of her treat and then said, simply, "I guess. He was nice." The girl held out the bag full of ice and waited for House to retrieve it. "My arm feels better." He tossed the bag into the sink and turned his attention back to her. Then she unexpectedly stated, "Mom said you're sad because your best, best friend ever died."

House propped himself against the counter, feeling like the girl had kicked him in the chest and knocked him backward. "He did," House answered as he started rubbing his leg.

"Sorry," she said, "I meant he 'passed away.'"

"You were right the first time," House replied. "He died. No matter how you say, it means the same thing."

"Uncle Wilson, right?"

"You remember him?" House asked, intrigued.

"Only a little bit. But Mom told me lots of stories. She said he was really sick."

"He was."

"Did it hurt a lot?"

House tilted his head as he considered the question. "I'm sure it did, sometimes. Your mom gave him medicine for pain. It would have hurt much worse if she wouldn't have done that."

"That was nice of her."

"It was," House easily admitted.

"You like her?" the girl asked bluntly.

He wasn't ready for a question like that. In one way he admired the girl's directness, and, in another way, he was thrown off by it. He narrowed his eyes, but the kid was undaunted, her veins miraculously filled with Cuddy's resolve and courage. Finally, he nodded and replied, "Yup."

She started to answer, but seemed distracted. She stared at the way House was digging into his thigh with the heel of his hand, and she sighed. "My hamster, Filbert, died," she admitted. "That made me really sad, too."

Completely unoffended by the implied comparison, House asked, "_Your_ mother let you get a hamster?"

"She got him for me after we moved here. But I didn't have him long and then he died."

"That sucks."

"Mom said I could get another one, but I didn't."

"Why?"

"They didn't have another Filbert at the store. And then Elena won a fish at the carnival, so I cleaned the tank and gave it to her for her fish."

"Why?" he asked again.

The girl shrugged. "Because I didn't want a different hamster, but when I saw the empty cage, it made me miss him. Elena needed it more. And now I don't see it too much. I don't visit the fish. They're kinda boring."

"And hamsters aren't boring?"

"They're furry and you can hold 'em!" she said loudly, because the answer was obvious.

Her eyes darted to his leg again, and the rough way he was rubbing into the muscle. She shoved the chair across the floor to the fridge and stood on it as he watched, wondering if she was getting herself another treat as a way to test his reaction. She opened the freezer, immediately grabbing the item she'd wanted, then jumping down onto the floor, creating a thud that seemed particularly loud given her relatively small weight. She pressed a ragged, tattered cloth monkey against his leg. "Here," she said, "this will help."

He looked down at the object he'd been looking for earlier, the 'boo monkey,' using his hand to steady it on his thigh. "I thought you were too old for this?" he questioned, seeing how worn the cuddly version of an ice pack was. "And I'm a lot older than you."

"You needed it," she said honestly.

He remembered the way she used to cling to that ugly thing for any little injury or illness. Cuddy had joked that the 'boo monkey' was the cure-all modern medicine had yet to fully utilize.

"I'm sorry about your friend," Rachel said, staring up with innocent, honest blue eyes.

House felt a pang of missing, an ache that soaked from his ears where her words first landed, and spread through his brain and into his chest. Sighing under the incredible weight he bore, he replied, "Me too."

Cuddy hurried into the kitchen, likely responding to the sound of Rachel jumping down from the chair. "Hey, bub, why are you up? You okay?"

Cuddy looked nervously between House and Rachel, already desperate to know what had happened between them in her absence. She'd wanted to be there when they met again to ensure everything went smoothly, but it seemed clear that Rachel and House had begun without her.

"She had an injury," House said, watching while Rachel held up her arm to show her mother the still invisible bruise. "Other arm," he whispered behind his hand, watching while Rachel switched arms and showed her mother again.

"Come on, Rach, back to bed," Cuddy said. "He's coming for dinner tomorrow, remember? You can hang out then."

"Are you sure?" Rachel asked, looking first at Cuddy and then at House with that same uninhibited stare that she seemed to constantly wear.

Cuddy asked, "Is that alright?"

The girl thought for a moment, then looked at House and said, "If you want to."

House nodded, just barely, considering the reasoning behind her choice of words.

"'Night," Rachel said before she walked away.

"Good night," he responded.

Cuddy whispered, "Back in a second," as she followed her daughter.

Everything was quiet as House waited in the kitchen for Cuddy to return when suddenly, like so many times before, an idea struck him. Although many had interpreted his sudden disappearances as dismissive, intentionally rude or deflective, when a true epiphany came, it was impossible to ignore. It was like there was nothing else in his world. The call was both loud and quiet, everything and nothing, painful and pleasurable all at once, and that thought became his everything.

He went back to the living room, putting on his sneakers and tying them just as Cuddy returned. "You're leaving now?" she asked.

"It's late."

"Are you gonna tell me what happened with Rachel?" Cuddy inquired with a nervousness he heard but didn't really absorb. "You guys get along okay?"

"Sure," he answered, absently. He stood, quickly offering a peck on her cheek as he went to the door.

She disarmed the alarm, watching him worriedly, wondering what in the hell had happened with Rachel. "I'll see you tomorrow?" she asked.

"Definitely," he replied, taking an unsteady step through the door.

There _was_ something that could cut through the tunnel vision that resulted from epiphany. He turned back, knowing intuitively that she was worried and also knowing that he didn't really _want_ her to worry. There was a flash of knowledge, a realization that if he didn't say anything, she'd be left to make assumptions. He paused, turned, and returned to the bottom step. "I'm not going to relapse or do something stupid. I'm okay. I just have something I need to take care of and I'm ready to take care of it right now. I'll see you tomorrow."

She offered a half smile and said, "Alright."

She leaned against the door jamb and watched as he went to his car. He opened the door, letting the rain soak his hair and seep into his coat, and he said, "Don't worry about me and Rachel. We'll be fine. I know that for a fact."

"How?"

"We don't know each other well yet, but we have one thing in common. You. We both love you. The kid and I…will make it work." Before she could reply, he got in his car, shut the door, and started the engine. As he backed his car up to turn it around, he saw her smile, casually waving her fingers goodbye.

* * *

Exiting like that was so _House_. She had grown tired of their secret affair and was more than ready to bring their relationship out from the shadows. Cuddy was acutely aware of what that meant. It meant eventually telling her mother and sister. It meant bringing Rachel into the mix. As he pulled away that night, she entertained a thousand questions. How in the hell would her mother react? Could House and Rachel really grow to accept each other? What would happen if Rachel did like House, but his legal problems separated them all again?

Cuddy reminded herself that she still needed to do this step-by-step, but she still wasn't sure which steps were best to take first. Oddly enough, she and House were probably the healthiest they'd ever been as a couple, but, at the same time, things were more complicated than they'd ever been.

When he dashed off, it reminded her of how things were both the same, and quite different. This was still House. He still might disappear in the middle of a conversation to deal with something he suddenly decided he needed to do. He'd always done that, and she didn't think anything would really stop him. At the same time, he did at least pause for a minute and clarify before he disappeared. He was _trying_. It was hard not to wonder what earthshattering revelation had come to him at three in the morning while talking to a child.

When she saw Rachel at breakfast, Cuddy asked how it went with House, trying to avoid sounding like an interrogator. Rachel answered that question the same way she answered questions about how her school day was. "Fine."

Cuddy didn't push for answers, after all, how much was Rachel supposed to figure out after a few minutes with the man? Cuddy had spoken with her daughter in recent weeks about Wilson and the man she'd been seeing. In fact, she'd had Rachel talk to her counselor about it, too, hoping to make this introduction go as well as possible.

As Cuddy pulled into her reserved parking spot at the hospital, she saw House's dilapidated car parked in the spot next to hers. Shaking her head, she looked at the "Reserved for" sign that House had clearly chosen to ignore.

House was not waiting for her in the chapel (their typical meeting place in this hospital) or in her office. Just to be sure, she swung into the ER to make sure he wasn't there either. As she walked beyond the ER, he caught her eye. He was sitting in the outdoor courtyard off the waiting room, bundled up in a thick wool coat, leaning his chin on his cane as he sat. Cuddy started walking along the floor-to-ceiling windowed wall toward the door when she saw a vaguely familiar woman going toward him.

The cancer survivor House had paid to play bartender for Wilson's last night out cautiously approached House and sat next to him. The woman started the conversation happily enough, but Cuddy could tell the moment he shared the bad news. The 'bartender' hung her head, subtly mourning the loss of a man she'd only known for a couple of hours, and marking the fall of another of cancer's victims.

House reached into his coat pocket and gave the woman a book. The woman held it tightly between her hands as she expressed her gratitude. She took a piece of paper that he'd given her and jotted down some information. When she tried to continue the conversation, he stood, unceremoniously taking the paper from her hand before he said goodbye and walked back into the hospital.

Cuddy caught up with him in the foyer, and before she could say anything, he said, "Need a favor."

Shortly after, they were in her office. House explained, "I'm going through Wilson's stuff." The task had been put off yet again after she'd found the vial stopper the last time they'd decided to go through Wilson's things. "I started last night."

"What did you give the bartender?" Cuddy asked, fully expecting a deflection.

"This annoying inspirational support book he used to give some of his patients. That was his copy."

"You didn't want to keep that?"

"What in the hell would I want some lightness and hope bullshit book for?" House asked, somewhat belligerently.

"Because it was his?"

"I have other things that were his. Anyway," he continued, walking over to her desk, placing a piece of paper on it and pointing to it heavily with his forefinger. "You have her records?"

"Of course. You want to work on her case?"

"There is no case. She's still in remission."

"So why do you want her records?"

"Not her health records, her billing file."

Cuddy stared at the paper while she thought about how she wanted to handle his request, but after a few seconds, she searched the billing database on her computer for the name House had given her. Cuddy sighed and he asked, "What does she owe?"

"Just under twelve grand. She's making payments."

House's forehead wrinkled. "Can't you apply a negotiated rate?"

"That _is_ the negotiated rate."

"Any administrator discounts?"

"I don't handle that here. The CFO makes all determinations above the Insurance and Billing Department. I can ask him, but I have to tell you, they negotiated her bill down to about one-eighth of what it was. Some of her treatments were experimental. Insurance didn't cover them."

House reached into an inside coat pocket and pulled out a pile of folded, tattered papers. Cuddy browsed through them, noting two life insurance policies payable to House's alias. He said, "Use this to pay off her debt."

"Are you sure?" Cuddy asked, surprised at the gesture. "You might need it."

"I don't need it. He was always busy caring about his patients or falling in love with them. He liked her. He would have tried to take care of her. I'm tired of looking at these papers and trying to figure out what to do with them."

Cuddy started tapping figures into a calculator and noted, "Are you sure about this?"

"I don't want it."

"I can put what's left into an account for Susan's future medical expenses."

"Who?"

"Susan…the bartender," Cuddy explained, knowing too well that House had never bothered with the woman's name.

House nodded. "Okay."

"One of our lawyers can draw it up. You'll still have to sign some of the papers since technically you're the beneficiary."

"Okay."

"Are you sure you're alright with this. You might need the money for—"

"I can't think of anything he'd like more than reaching out from beyond the grave to over-care for a patient," House interrupted.

"I think he was trying to take care of you, make sure your needs were met."

"That's exactly what he did. He made sure I have everything I need." House suddenly stopped rolling his cane between his palms and he focused on her. He didn't stare in his usual prying way, although he was going to wait there for an eternity, if necessary.

What he'd said in a couple of short sentences was a confession as soul baring as any dictionary length, tell-all book. Her lips moved to answer but her brain took a few more seconds to supply the words, "He didn't come here because of me."

"He came here because of us."

"He came here because he wanted to try to fight cancer. He wanted to live."

"You don't really believe that, do you? He was an _oncologist_. One of the best. He was also a master meddler. He played us. And we fell for it. Both of us. He tricked us into willingly going exactly where he wanted us to be."

"So what are you going to do?" she asked.

"I have all that I need. He did what he did best so I can have who I do best," House replied. "So what I'm going to _do_…is not screw it up."

Her breath hitched a moment. How many times had they looked at each other, argued, kissed, screamed, conspired, fucked? He could still make her heart pump out of rhythm and her skin warm like she was eighteen again. Just as she started to feel a little awkward about how easily she could be stirred, she remembered the confession he'd just made. He hadn't just said that he wanted her or even needed her. He'd said she was _all_ that he needed. "What if I suddenly get sick and die? You need more in life than me," she stated.

"Fortunately for you, I'm the world's foremost diagnostician. I've learned from my mistakes. If you get sick, there's only one doctor handling your case. Anything from the common cold to sarcoidosis, I'm your man."

"But not every illness can be cured, even by the best of the best," she suggested, Wilson's recent passing implied in every word. "You can't invest everything in one person because it means you can so easily lose _everything_."

"I'm having dinner with Rachel tonight. I'm not a mathematician, but I believe that's actually two people. I'll secure this investment, then I'll diversify."


End file.
